Gone is the symbiosis between farmer and land. In fact, it is apparently the availability of former strip mines in western Kentucky that has drawn operators to this state. A sow unit like the one proposed by Buckman Farms, LLC houses over 5,000 sows. An operation planned for Hopkins County will initially house 24,000 sows, with production rising to half a million hogs by 1999. Pigs remain in the sow unit 16 to 18 days, then move to the nursery for 52 days, and then move to the finishing floors for 16 to 20 weeks.
Hogs produce two to four times as much waste as humans.
Waste is periodically removed from the lagoon and sprayed on fields as a fertilizer. The history of hog lagoons has not been reassuring to those living downwind or downstream. In 1991 a ten-acre lagoon ruptured, sending tons of water into a nearby creek. In 1995, an eight-acre lagoon gave way. The total volume of spilled hog waste in North Carolina in 1995 was three times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez.