In a recent two-part series Steph Larsen considers the impact on rural communities of consolidation in the hog industry. She begins on a tour in rural North Carolina.

I went on a bus tour of Duplin County, North Carolina to see how confined animal feeding operations impact rural communities. Duplin County is home to less than 50,000 people, but those people share the county with over 2 million hogs on 500 large hog farms, the highest concentration of such operations in the state.

Each farm has between 3,000 and 12,000 animals. As our guides spoke, we drove by an open manure lagoon. This untreated manure is sprayed onto the fields using large pumps and existing irrigation infrastructure.

In the second post, Steph reflects on her visit to a family farm in Iowa that raises hogs differently.

There are ways to raise meat that sustain our environment and help family farmers and communities thrive. A livestock market made of many small and mid-sized independent family farmers built vibrant rural communities across this country. When the income from raising livestock is distributed to many farmers that money is circulates within the community. We know that small and mid-sized family farmers can be revived, and that they can sustain both our environment and our communities.

Read both these and other blog posts at www.cfra.org/blog.