WALTON, Ill. - John Ryan's announcement that he planned to buy his aunt's farm and build a grain storage bin was welcome news in this tiny burg that contains little more than a grain elevator, a church and the Walton Tap.
But instead of building the bin, Ryan immediately sold his land to out-of-town investors, who in turn erected a farm called Precision Pork that will contain up to 5,000 hogs in two long metal barns atop gaping, concrete manure pits.
The way Illinois law is written, neighbors had no real say in whether the facility would be approved. So they sued, an increasingly popular--and increasingly successful--choice in the raging battle over factory-style farms that is playing out across rural America.
From Alabama to Illinois, grass-roots groups have turned to the courts in an attempt to shut down industrial-style concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, or to keep them from being built. In Iowa alone, 14 lawsuits are pending that allege hog farms are nuisances.
"People who live in these rural communities are completely fed up," said Melanie Shepherdson, an expert on factory farms with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "When you have the state government and the federal government not doing anything about it, then the people who live in these communities say, `We don't want to deal with that, and if you're not going to clean it up, we're going to hire our own lawyer.'"
That's what happened in Walton. At a time when many farmers are struggling to survive, the township initially had been happy to have what it thought would be a grain bin--so happy that it paved a dirt road and a neighbor gave Ryan a chunk of land so additional electric service could be extended to the property.
"We've been here a long time, and we have no local control," said Tom Drew, whose farm, a quarter-mile from Precision Pork, has been in his family since 1850. "My land is my kingdom, and I shouldn't have it invaded by odor, by bad disease."
The lawsuit against Precision Pork was filed Jan. 29, and both sides are engaged in preliminary legal maneuvering.
Precision Pork's owners declined to discuss specifics of the case for this article. But defenders of large-scale hog farms argue that getting bigger is the only way for farmers to survive in the cutthroat world of global competition.
Industry says problems few
While the hog industry is trying new technologies to reduce the odor, advocates contend that most hog farms cause few problems for their neighbors and the environment, and that the backlash has been driven by urban residents who move to the country and don't like the smells that come with it.
"Most livestock operations operate in anonymity," said Don Parrish, senior director of regulatory relations at the American Farm Bureau. "You don't hardly know they're there."
The lawsuits come at a time of fierce debate over CAFO regulation in legislatures across the country and growing efforts by environmental groups to catalyze opposition to factory farming.
Many lawsuits have been filed by environmental groups such as the National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and Waterkeeper Alliance, alleging that factory farms have polluted the air or local waterways.
But increasingly, neighbors themselves are heading to court, complaining that the odor and gases wafting toward their homes are making them sick and destroying their property values. The lawsuits, which have caused bitter feuds in many rural communities, have been fueled by a string of recent court victories by rural residents who live near factory farms. For instance:
In October 2002, an Iowa jury awarded a $32 million judgment to eight plaintiffs in a suit against a neighboring farm where, they said, 30,000 hogs were creating bad smells and noxious gases and were attracting swarms of flies. After an appeal was filed, the suit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
In March 2003, a judge in DeKalb County, Ill., issued an injunction blocking construction of a planned 8,000-hog facility. The plaintiffs, including retired Illinois Supreme Court Justice John Nickels, argued that pollutants drifting from the hog farm could endanger the health of residents.
Last month, after a protracted court battle with neighbors, Tyson Foods Inc. agreed to stop raising chickens at a large farm near a housing development in Marion, Ky., effectively shutting down a farm that once housed 400,000 chickens.
Fred Roth, a Naperville, Ill., attorney, said when he handled his first factory farm case in 1999, he searched for similar cases and could not find any. Since then, he said, there has been a "groundswell of objections" that grew out of desperation over living near factory farms and frustration with the political process.
Roth, who represents the neighbors of Precision Pork, said the courtroom successes are due in part to recent scientific studies showing that CAFOs can cause health problems and diminish property values.
Kentucky resident Aloma Dew said lax federal and state regulation is driving people to court.
"The federal regulations are pitiful," said Dew, a Sierra Club coordinator who won her own suit against Tyson in November that complained of air pollution from local chicken farms. "The states aren't taking care of the problems. Corporate polluters seem to get their way and the ear of the legislators, and the people with the problems don't."
A report last year by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, seemed to support Dew's allegations, saying that loopholes in federal regulations and inconsistent enforcement leave an estimated 60 percent of the largest CAFOs unregulated.
At the state level, many legislatures have passed Right to Farm laws that make it nearly impossible for residents to file lawsuits against farms claiming that they are nuisances. Michigan's Right to Farm law also contains a provision that neighbors who complain about odor from farms can be fined if the allegations are unfounded.
Locals superseded in Illinois
In Illinois, CAFO regulations include a provision that bars local governments from ruling on where factory farms can be located. Instead, the state Department of Agriculture decides whether to approve a CAFO project.
While the state has final authority, it allows local governments to conduct a public hearing and make non-binding recommendations on facilities with more than 2,500 hogs. There have been 20 such hearings since 1997, when the state CAFO regulations were passed.
But in about half of the instances in which a county board voted against a proposed CAFO, the Department of Agriculture approved the project anyway, said Warren Goetsch, bureau chief of environmental programs for the agency. Since 1997, 612 applications have been submitted and 425 facilities have been constructed, most of them housing pigs, he said.
"They act like we have a voice, but it's a moot voice," said Karen Hudson, who as president of Families Against Rural Messes is one of Illinois' most outspoken critics of CAFOs. She said rural residents have little input in the political process because agribusiness has so many boosters in state and federal government.
For example, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Jim Moseley, is a champion of industrial-style hog production and the former manager of Infinity Pork, a hog CAFO in Indiana. Illinois' Department of Agriculture director, Chuck Hartke, is a former farmer whose son now runs the family's factory-style hog farm.
"With all these agribusiness ties, where does the public fit in?" Hudson asked.
Hartke is firm in his support for large livestock farms.
"Since my first day in this position, I've said somehow we have to develop a tolerance in Illinois to livestock," Hartke said. "Every time we scream and holler about a livestock operation, we're chasing jobs out of Illinois."
He argued that the state needs to set the rules for CAFO location or nearly every county would ban them.
"Before you know it, we're going to be raising all our livestock in Kansas, in Colorado, in New Mexico," he said.
The increase in litigation against factory farms also comes amid a background of rapid changes in the structure of U.S. agriculture, particularly in the livestock industry. Large livestock farms have steadily been replacing smaller, family-run farms to compete globally and meet the demands of grocery giants such as Wal-Mart.
There were 1,057,570 American farms with hogs in 1965; by 2002, there were 75,350, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Yet hog production showed only a modest increase, suggesting an enormous concentration.
Meatpackers bankroll farms
Family farms used to be considered large if they had 1,000 hogs. These days, many pig farmers don't own any hogs but raise thousands of them under contract for the nation's major meatpacking firms, which help finance construction of large CAFO buildings.
And sometimes the farmer is eliminated altogether. For instance, one of the nation's biggest hog farms, Circle Four Farms in Utah, is owned by Smithfield Foods and has about 500,000 hogs.
"It's not like farmers and ranchers wake up one morning and say, `I want 10,000 pigs in one spot,'" said Parrish of the American Farm Bureau. "We're in a world market. And if we're going to compete internationally, we have to be low-cost producers, and we have to do so for products that consumers demand."
The benefit of such a streamlined system is that consumers in the United States get relatively cheap and uniform products, Parrish said, whether it's McDonald's french fries or pork chops at the grocery store. The downside is that a way of life in rural America has been "pushed and pulled and tugged by those consumer realities and world-market pressures."
Dave Roper, former president of the National Pork Producers Council, said the increasing litigation against factory farms may accelerate consolidation in farming, because only the largest farms will be able to afford new technology that masks odor and limits environmental problems.
While Roper complained that much of the litigation is driven by a "not in my back yard" mind-set, he said his organization urges its members to recognize the potential impact of building a large-scale farm.
"We think the producers need to be good neighbors," he said. "They've got to take care of the waste that's generated on their facilities."
`It's not about smell'
James McCune, who raises 12,000 hogs in three separate facilities near Princeton, Ill., said the complaints about CAFOs are caused mainly by jealousy. He is trying to open a fourth pig facility despite opposition from some residents.
"It's not about smell," McCune said. "It's about people without money complaining about people with money."
The collision of social and economic forces surrounding CAFOs has played out in the tiny town of Walton, which is roughly between Princeton and Dixon in northwestern Illinois. Like the rest of the Midwest, the area around Walton has experienced a steady decline in the number of farms and a gradual increase in the size of the farms that remain.
In 1987 there were 1,148 farms in Lee County with an average size of 368 acres. In 1997, the most recent year for which statistics available, the number of farms had slipped to 904 and the size of the remaining farms was 435 acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The decline in the number of Lee County farms with hogs was even more pronounced, from 193 in 1987 to 85 in 1997, the statistics show.
For the residents of Walton, their first inkling that something might be amiss was when heavy machinery rumbled toward John Ryan's property last fall. "A farmer couldn't afford that kind of equipment," Drew said.
Construction continued as it became clear that a factory pig farm was being built. Residents who lived near the farm received a certified letter explaining the project and containing Precision Pork's "Good Neighbor Policy."
"Precision Pork is designed to allow `smaller' swine producers to remain competitive in today's swine industry, helping them compete with the `Wal-Marts' of the swine industry," the letter said, promising state-of-the-art odor-control equipment.
The letter, signed by Precision Pork's Michael Schelkopf, encouraged anyone with concerns about the facility to call him. But communication ceased soon after, when Schelkopf attended a meeting called by neighbors.
"People yelled and hollered at him and told him to go back someplace else," Drew said. "We didn't want him here."
Schelkopf, a veterinarian from a prominent Sycamore family, said the farm will be owned by a group of investors "who have been in the swine business," although he declined to name them.
A firm called Bethany Swine Management Services, which Schelkopf runs with his brother Charles, will manage the new facility. Bethany already manages three others, though Schelkopf declined to say where they are located.
Schelkopf would not disclose more details about the Precision Pork facility on the advice of his attorney. Ryan, the farmer who sold the property to Precision Pork, declined to comment.
State EPA logs complaints
Schelkopf said there have not been environmental problems at the other facilities. However, records from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency show seven complaints about odors associated with Schelkopf hog farms since 1998.
"The odor emanating from this facility is so bad [that] folks who live within 3 to 4 miles have to stay indoors and close windows and doors," says a July 2000 complaint from a neighbor of Illini Swine in Kingston, whose president is Charles Schelkopf.
At nearby Lincolnland Farms, which also lists Charles Schelkopf as president, a rupture to the side of a manure lagoon in 1988 leaked into the Kishwaukee River, spreading manure 37 miles downstream and killing more than 70,000 fish, according to EPA documents and newspaper reports.
Drew and his neighbors said they have tried to get local elected officials involved in their fight but have received a tepid response. In the meantime, they are waiting for the hogs to arrive at Precision Pork--and for their day in court.
"Nobody who supports this thing lives anywhere near it," said Jeff Gugerty, who built a home on his family farm in 2001. "That's the last thing we need is a stinking hog factory coming in. . . . I'm a half-mile from that hog house to the east. I'm going to get blasted by the smell."Chicago Tribune/Andrew Martin
