The Iowans Stopping Factory Farms, One At A Time
Christine Ro – Jul. 25th 2024
Six families used to live on the same square mile as Barb Kalbach, near Dexter, Iowa. Now hers is the only one left.
This farm has changed shape over the decades. She and her husband used to have a more diverse farm of corn, soy, pigs and cattle. But the transformation of Iowa’s agricultural economy has favored bigger and bigger livestock producers. Livestock bidders have dwindled and moved further away, while big pork processors have been able to drive prices down. Kalbach couldn’t compete: “The farms are so big now. We’re small.”
They had to give up their livestock, which at one point amounted to 100 head of cattle and 500 hogs in a year. They’ve held on with farming corn and soybeans (which in Iowa largely go to the biofuel ethanol and livestock feed). But the neighboring family farms no longer exist.
With the disappearance of the small farms came the loss of small businesses that depended on them: veterinarians, feed stores, places to buy tractor parts. “It’s a snowball,” Kalbach says of this family-farming ecosystem. “It’s kind of like a house with the foundation and we’re removing the foundation.”
What has supplanted the family farms are factory farms: giant operations that house at least 500 cows, 1,000 hogs, or 100,000 egg-laying hens. These also have outsize effects on air and water quality, while contributing little to local economies. There are now thousands of these behemoths in Iowa. Though it can sometimes seem like they’re Davids to industrial agriculture’s Goliath, Kalbach and other activists have been fighting back.
The High Price of Factory Farms in Iowa
If you eat pork in the U.S., there’s a decent chance that it came from Iowa. When it comes to livestock farming, Iowa hits a lot of superlatives. It has the most pigs. The most factory farms. The most animal waste.
As Iowa’s hog population has skyrocketed, the number of hog farmers has shrunk. Analysis by Food & Water Watch, an environmental nonprofit, suggests that between 1982 and 2017, the number of hogs sold in Iowa jumped by 2.5 times. In the same period, the number of hog farms dropped by almost 90% and total farm employment declined by 44%. This comes down to corporate consolidation: bigger businesses, but fewer of them.
Click here to read the full article at Forbes.com.