Corporate farms run into opposition across country

MASON CITY, Iowa -- In Pennsylvania, five cities have banned large corporations from owning farmland or operating farms. Leaders in a Missouri county upset by a hog waste spill ordered a company to take its hogs and get out. In Iowa, two counties passed unprecedented bans on livestock farms.

Across the nation's farm country, local governments are raising a stink about corporate agriculture -- and in the process, stepping into a fight between large-scale farms and neighbors.

Some farmers and corporate interests call the trend disturbing and warn that overregulation could drive up food prices and lead some livestock production to move out of the country.

But local officials are taking matters into their own hands because states haven't adequately enforced laws already on the books, said Melanie Shepherdson, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.

"People are starting to realize that 'This isn't just happening in my town. Other people are experiencing this, too,"' she said.

Bans in Iowa

In February, officials in Iowa's Cerro Gordo County declared a one-year ban on the construction of new confinements. Days later, neighboring Franklin County followed suit.

The bans were unparalleled in Iowa, which leads the nation in pork and egg production.

Though Franklin County officials later backed off their ban, saying they needed to discuss it further with their health board, Cerro Gordo's had an immediate effect. Sparboe Farms, a Minnesota company, quickly withdrew its proposal to build an egg-laying plant with 2.4 million chickens near Clear Lake and now is looking elsewhere.

Factory-style farms have been around since the 1970s, but they've become more common in the last 15 years. As they proliferate, so does concern that their concentrated manure is harming human health and environment, with its effects rippling as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.

"We need to protect the health of the public, at the same time create an environment that's conducive to agricultural growth," said Ron Osterholm, a member of the Cerro Gordo health board.

Osterholm and county supervisor Bob Amosson said they're prepared to be the target of possible lawsuits. Worth County, to the north, has been sued for making strict air and water pollution rules. The case is pending.

Local differences

Michelle Nowlin, an attorney who often handles such cases at Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill N.C., said one argument for local rules is that communities and counties vary in their economies and topography. Federal and state standards don't consider those differences, she said.

"Only the people in that county are able to take a position in order to safeguard those natural features," Nowlin said.

Several North Carolina counties restrict how close livestock farms can be to water wells and homes, as do many Pennsylvania townships.

Don Parrish, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Farm Bureau Federation, said the trend toward local regulation threatens the nation's livestock industry.

Rules can drive up farmers' expenses, leading to higher prices that could compel U.S. consumers to buy cheaper foods made overseas, Parrish said. Large farms, he said, are satisfying American consumers' hunger for cheap, lean meat.

"I would hate knowing that this country is as dependent on Brazil and Argentina for food as we are on Saudi Arabia for oil," Parrish said.

The Cerro Gordo moratorium means Randy Nuehring's family can't expand their 3,000-hog operation.

"It's not a good deal," Nuehring said. "We would have to leave if we want to expand."