Iowa could support 45,700 livestock confinements, but should it?

ELMA, Ia. — Trent Thiele loves feeding and caring for the 3,400 pigs that live less than a half mile from his home.

"I truly enjoy coming to work every morning. They're always in a good mood," said Thiele, reaching down to scratch the backs of a few pigs inside the confined feeding operation.

Without the northeast Iowa business, Thiele said he would be forced to move to a city or town to support his wife and their five children, a common tale in a state that's seen rural jobs and opportunity drain away over several decades.

That's why Thiele, 35, doesn't understand calls for a moratorium on concentrated animal feeding operations."I don't know why we'd want to limit future generations," Thiele said, adding that farmers need the fertilizer.

The clamor over confinements has grown louder after one expert estimated Iowa could support 45,700 CAFOs, four times more facilities for pigs, cattle and chickens than currently exist in the state.

Skirmishes between CAFOs and their neighbors have played out across Iowa for at least three decades. In that time, the number of pigs has grown about 60 percent in the nation's largest pork-producing state as farmers have shifted from smaller to bigger operations.

Then last summer, a state report revealed satellite imagery had detected 5,000 more confinements than regulators previously knew about, nearly doubling earlier counts and outraging critics.

In western Iowa, Luke Haffner says ag's seemingly unfettered expansion is among the reasons he and his wife may give up on rural Iowa.

He sees big corporations buying land to put up hog and other confinements, without connections to the local communities that he believes would make them operate more responsibly.

Instead, companies reap profits without concern for their impact on the environment, and rural Iowans, hungry for jobs, go along, he said.

"Rural Iowa is losing people, losing talent and it doesn't care," the 40-year-old said.

2 new plants will process close to 3 million pigs a year

An ad posted to Fort Dodge's Craigslist last month indicates how rapidly hog facilities are popping up in Iowa: A buyer said he'd pay a premium — $10,000 an acre — for land to build 40 to 50 CAFOs.

"The expansion we’re seeing in communities across Iowa is massive," said Erica Blair, an organizer for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a grassroots group based in Des Moines that is fighting confinement expansion.

Blair blames new pork processing plants for industry growth. "We saw this coming with the Prestage plant," she said.

Seaboard-Triumph Foods' $300 million pork processing plant opened in Sioux City last fall. Prestage Foods is building a $250 million plant near Eagle Grove that's slated to open early next year.

Each plant will process about 10,000 hogs daily — or close to 3 million pigs annually.

Mason City rejected the Prestage project after a contentious debate. It later landed in Wright County.

This year, U.S. hog production is forecast to grow 4 percent, but expansion in Iowa is likely to be even stronger, said Dermot Hayes, an Iowa State University economics professor.

Few places are better suited for pork production: Iowa, the nation's top corn producer, has ample feed, 30 million acres of crops that can use fertilizer that CAFOs create, and a growing number of meatpacking plants to process the animals.

Jen Sorenson, Iowa Select Farms' spokeswoman, said farmers are "going to grow their herds to fill that space. Packers 'pull up' production, in a sense."

High profits drive growth in Iowa's pig population 

Iowa Select is among the fastest-growing pork producers in the state.

Hayes, who conducted an economic analysis for the company, said Iowa Select will go from producing 8 percent to 14 percent of Iowa's pork when its expansion is completed, based on 2015 levels. 

Hayes disagrees that new processing plants are pushing Iowa's hog production higher.

It's strong profits over the past three years that's fueling recent confinement expansion, Hayes said.

With better profits come more pigs. The number of pigs in Iowa has climbed 17.5 percent over the past decade, USDA data show. 

More pigs drive the need for added processing space, Hayes said.

The packing plant expansion is creating a "musical chairs of contracts," he said, as meatpackers look for suppliers.

Prestage Foods, based in North Carolina, said it would provide about 60 percent of the pigs processed at the plant from about 100 Iowa facilities it owns.

The remaining 40 percent will come from independent producers, it says.

"Fundamentally, Iowa's pork industry is growing because they're making money," said Hayes, who is selling about 3 acres to Iowa Select for a facility near Clarion.

The debate: Rural jobs vs. quality of life

At a Friday night public hearing in Rockwell City, about 150 residents debated Iowa Select's proposed $18 million sow operation, which would have nearly 7,500 animals.

Most people attending the meeting last month supported the project, saying it would provide good-paying jobs — about 18, the company said — in a rural community that needs them.

The jobs will bring about $700,000 in annual payroll to the community, Sorenson said.

With projects like Calhoun County's, the Iowa Falls company expects to boost its employment —  workers and contract pig producers — by 33 percent to about 2,460 by 2019 in Iowa.

With truckers, manure application workers, farm managers and other contracted services, the number grows to 7,464 workers, earning close to $500 million annually.

It will have an economic impact of $1 billion as it ripples into the economy, the company says.

Haffner and some other area residents attending the Rockwell City meeting said the company's expansion is hurting the quality of life in rural Iowa.

Rose Hosek, who lives a mile from the proposed facility, said she's worried about the project's impact on her water.

"I don't want to live next to something that could contaminate my well," said Hosek, adding that a field next to her home will be sprayed with manure from the project.

"I try to be an excellent neighbor, and I ask that they do the same," said Hosek, who later added that she and her husband chose Rockwell City because they wanted to support rural Iowa.

Now, the 38-year-old mother wonders if they made the right decision.

The supervisors approved the project a few days later.

'We don't have a handle on what's happening'

Iowa Select, declining to outline its entire expansion plans, said it is considering building three, 2,450-head facilities in Calhoun County.

Local residents worry it could be a dozen or more.

Iowa CCI puts Iowa Select's expansion statewide around 20 new facilities this year.

Blair said rapid expansion highlights the need for leaders to talk about limiting growth, especially with the potential for 45,700 CAFOs.

"It's an appalling number of factory farms that could be on Iowa’s landscape," Blair said.  The state's estimate of 11,000 existing confined and open lot facilities — "and that's a conservative number — is far too many." 

"We're already seeing a high level of concern from Iowans who can't enjoy life outside," she said, adding that Iowa also has a record number of impaired waterways.

Iowa had 750 impaired waterways in 2016, based on an Iowa Department of Natural Resources estimate. It's about half of all assessed waterways in Iowa.

The leading cause of impairments is bacteria, often associated with waste from animals and people.

The 45,700 CAFOs estimate — pulled from a DNR employee's conference presentation — represents how many animal feeding operations could be supported, based on the state's fertilizer needs, said Alex Murphy, an Iowa Department of Natural Resources spokesman. 

Iowa livestock producers would be unable to build 30,000 more facilities, given the state's separation requirements, he said. 

The state requires that large hog facilities, with 2,500 or more pigs, meet minimal distances from homes, drinking water sources, businesses, churches, schools and public trails and other recreational amenities.

But Blair said the state's rules are weak, giving producers an opportunity to expand nearly unchecked.

Iowa residents complain that producers are using a loophole in the law, building facilities with 2,499 pigs, to cut distance and construction requirements.

"Forty-five thousand factory farms is scary, but what we have right now is not good," Blair said. "We don't have a handle on what's happening on Iowa's landscape."

Iowa CCI has called repeatedly for a moratorium, concerned about Iowa's water quality.

David Johnson, an Ocheyedan independent, has gained little traction in his efforts to tighten the rules governing livestock operations, especially limiting how close facilities can be to homes.

There's no support in the Republican-controlled Legislature for a moratorium, either, he said.

Brenna Smith, Gov. Kim Reynolds' spokeswoman, said the livestock industry is important to rural Iowa's economy.

Iowa's regulations "ensure CAFOs meet certain environmental requirements prior to building," Smith said.

"These safeguards ensure the state’s natural resources are protected," she said.

'Just because it's legal, doesn't mean it's good'

Gene Tinker, who was DNR's coordinator of animal feeding operations for 14 years, said Iowa needs to have more discussion about where livestock facilities should be located.

Iowa's problem is allowing producers to build facilities on land that is "legally allowed but just plain are not good sites ... whether that's next to housing developments, sinkholes or trout streams," said Tinker, who raises cattle and farms in northeast Iowa.

"Just because it's legal, doesn't mean it's good," said Tinker, adding that it unnecessarily creates livestock opponents.

Neighbors feel like facilities are "getting shoved down their throats," said Tinker, who was laid off by DNR last year due to budget cuts.

He's filed a complaint against the state agency, alleging it mismanaged some funding and seeks to return to the department.

Even with little legislative action, Humboldt County supervisors are fighting against a 5,000-head Iowa Select finishing facility, saying it could hurt area water. A finishing facility is where pigs grow to their final weight before slaughter.

David Lee, a Humboldt County supervisor, said the proposed facility sits near a tile drainage ditch and intake that eventually drains into the Des Moines River, one of two sources for drinking water for 500,000 central Iowa residents.

Lee said the facility should sit farther away from the drainage intake, but Iowa Select and DNR say the drainage ditch doesn't qualify as a protected water source.

In turn, Iowa Select has asked that DNR revoke Humboldt County's ability to review projects.

Lee said the county plans to challenge the project in court, even though the state approved it.

"We should have more control over what goes into our county," said Lee, who supports a moratorium while oversight is strengthened. "Right now, we have no control whatsoever."

Growing contract production, where farmers own the facilities but Iowa Select and other corporations provide the pigs, feed and other services, generates too little value to pull young Iowans back to rural homes, Lee said.

But Thiele, the 35-year-old pig producer, said some of his neighbors are raising pigs for him and his four partners, with the value of the manure reducing their costs and making their operations more financially viable.

Thiele, an independent producer whose business lets the partners share duties, risks and costs, feels lucky to be his own boss, able to take time off for a sick child or school event.

And he's building value in his operation and supporting other northeast Iowa businesses. "We're helping stimulate growth," said Thiele, the president-elect of the Iowa Pork Producers Association.