BY JON HILLSON
ST. PAUL, Minnesota - In the small towns that break the rolling landscape of the rural Midwest, in the homes of working farmers, and in the pages of local newspapers, there is a mounting debate about the growth of sprawling, capitalist-owned hog-raising operations. These large farms, sometimes called "corporate" or "factory" farms are often connected to a network of contract farmers. Increased attention is now focused on this issue as a result of protests by working farmers who fear for their future under intensified competition from hog-raising giants and contractors.

Farmers under contract are forced to take on considerable long-term risk, including going deeply in debt. In return they are "guaranteed" a short-term market for their hogs, though contracts are generally structured to make it easy for the large operators to break them, leaving the contractors with a mound of debt and no market for their products.

The number of hog farmers in the United States has decreased from 3 million in 1950 to 256,000 in 1990 - a figure that continues to spiral downward under the current restructuring of the pork-producing industry.The growth of confinement operations also poses considerable environmental problems. The lagoons where hog waste is stored can seep into the rivers, streams, and the water table. Stench from the lagoons can be smelled for great distances.

On April 1, 2,000 farmers, unionists, political activists, and young people demonstrated in Unionville, Missouri, near the Iowa border to protest against Premium Standard Farms Inc., which has 73 confinement buildings and an on-site packing house that employs 1,500 workers in Lincoln Township.

The following article is based on trips to Minnesota farm areas, discussions, meetings, and other information.

Mike Erickson has been farming on land that's been in the family since the late 1940s. He raises corn, soybeans, sheep, and with his father up the road, hogs.

"We had to sell some of the land off to keep the farm," he said, pointing to nearby acreage. Last year they sold the 30 sows they maintained for breeding. "We couldn't afford to keep them anymore," Erickson explained.

He and his father purchased 100 feeder pigs. Inside their hog barn, he noted that low corn prices have enabled them to raise the pigs for sale to a broker. "This is your basic operation," he said, as the two-month-old pigs run and jostle each other for feed. The smell in the lightly ventilated, aging barn is pungent, but it recedes as soon as you step outside.

"The barn needs all kinds of improvement, but we can't get any loans," he said. By contracting with a big company, he added, it's easy at first to get loans. "But," he emphasized, "it's not really yours. And if something goes wrong, you lose the farm."

In Renville County, 43 farmers pooled resources to set up a small mega-barn.

The shining structures of Churchill Cooperative Farms, heavily posted with "No Trespassing" signs, house nearly 7,000 pigs. The animals are brought in at 15 pounds, raised, and prepared for slaughter in Minnesota and Iowa packinghouses. These windowless metal confinement barns, stainless steel inside, and tin or zinc outside, are state- of-the-art operations, capital intensive, and computerized. The farmers have a corn-raising operation that provides the feed supply directly for their pigs at the mega-barn.

Several signs reading "We oppose factory farms" are nailed into trees along rural roads in the area.

"I don't care if something's big, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody," said Darlene Hand. She and her husband, who's recuperating from a heart attack, manage a 650-acre corn and soybean farm on the outskirts of Northfield, 35 miles south of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Hand and four other farmers sat in her living room, explaining how they organized area farmers to win a narrow vote from Rice County commissioners last fall to declare a year-long moratorium on any expansion of Holden Farms Inc.

The owners, a partnership of two wealthy farmers and a big landholder in the area, had wanted to convert a turkey barn into a hog confinement barn of nearly 3,000 sows, build additional confinement facilities, and create a multi-site operation of more than 21,000 animals.

The issue was joined in February 1994, when farmers first learned of the expansion proposal. The principal reason for opposition to Holden Farms was "the smell," said Hand, a former hog farmer. "We know people a quarter of a mile from their existing operation, and even with central air conditioning, you can smell dead hogs in the living room. This isn't normal animal waste. It's eerie."

The other farmers vigorously agreed. They explained how summer events at their homes were canceled because of the intense odor. In photos, one farmer captured an open sewer of hog waste, including carcasses of dead animals, floating in black water.

Another farmer, whose land would abut the expansion, wrote in a letter to the Northfield News, "In just one of these one-square-mile areas nearly 10,000 adult and young pigs will be concentrated. My math makes that a city larger than Northfield. We are witnessing the creation of the equivalent of cities' worth of sewage with disposal plans which would be shameful in Third World countries."

"There are supposedly regulations, but they're never enforced," noted Stephanie Henriksen, who raises soybean, corn, and alfalfa. She got so involved in the opposition to the expansion she had to close down her small store.

The owners of Holden Farms just "thought they could ramrod everything through, without anybody knowing it," said Mike Daniels, a young, sixth generation farmer who raises livestock on land that's been in his family since 1856.

The informal group did research on environmental effects; addressed local and state officials; got the ear of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency; sent letters; got hundreds of people, most of them farmers, to sign petitions; and sparked an intense, running debate in local newspapers.

Normally routine township council meetings were packed to overflowing to discuss ordinance proposals on waste management and limits on the distance confinement barns could be to residences.

Supporters of the expansion mobilized, too. An emotionally charged county commissioners meeting drew hundreds of foes and backers of the expansion, with proponents of the project "all wearing these T-shirts that said 'FARM' for Farmers Agricultural Rights Movement," Hand noted. The expansion was backed by several contract farmers, feed merchants, veterinarians, and the Hormel meatpacking company.

The opponents won support from environmentalists, like the Sierra Club, and "some students and biology department faculty from Carleton College," according to Marlene Halverson, who lives on her family's corn and soybean farm of 55 years. They were upset because the expansion "would be just across from where the college holds their classes," she explained.

"The soil around here is very sandy," Hand said. "Leakage from the lagoons goes right into the water table."

Hand described the polarization in the area over the issue.

"The little town church split right down the middle. People I've known since I was born," she nodded in the direction of an adjoining farm, "turn the other way on the street when they see me. Friendships have been destroyed."

"We all lost friends, but we got to know each other," Darlene Hand said. "And we decided we were not going to roll over and play dead. That's made everything worth it."  
 
 
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