Corporate Swine and Capitalist Pigs: A Decade of Environmental Injustice and Protest in North Carolina

Introduction SINCE THE 1970s, AGRICULTURAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH AMERICA have become more closely linked to a wide range of social and environmental problems. Soil and water resources have been degraded, wildlife habitats have been destroyed, and rural communities have been dissolved and uprooted due, in part, to various changes accompanying the industrialization of farming and food production (Gertler, 1992). The scale, mechanization, specialization, capital-intensity, and chemical-intensity of agricultural production have dramatically increased, with the result that large agribusinesses and individual farm operators have come under greater environmental scrutiny associated with the broader "greening" of public opinion since 1970 (Buttel, 1992). For many observers, the growing corporate control over the nature of land use and food production in the U.S. constitutes a major crisis for independent farmers, American culture, and the larger ecosystem (Berry, 1977; Dalecki and Coughenour, 1992; Rifkin, 1992). Such e vents are also becoming integrated into the emerging theoretical framework of the "new environmentalism" and its social justice focus on the struggles of grassroots movements against racism, sexism, and classism (Belkhir and Adeola, 1997; Belkhir and Butler, 1998; Taylor, 1997). Perhaps nowhere are the socio-environmental implications of agro-industrialization and corporate control better illustrated today than in the case of North Carolina's swine industry (Edwards and Ladd, 2000; Furuseth, 1997; Molnar et al., 1997). Since the early 1990s, North Carolina has been the fastest growing swine producing state in the country, as well as the national innovator in industrialized pork production (Diforio, 1996; Furuseth, 1997; Swine Odor Task Force, 1995; Whittle, 1996). The number of hogs in North Carolina soared at an unprecedented rate of growth--from 3.7 million in 1991 to almost 10 million by 1997 -- before a statewide moratorium temporarily capped the growth of large swine operations (Clean Water Network et al., 2000). Nevertheless, industry expansion catapulted the state from sixth to second in swine production, surpassing poultry and tobacco as the state's top agricultural commodities (Nowlin, 1997; Shiffer, 1997; Silverstein, 1999; Whittle, 1996). Clearly, the state's booming swine industry has allowed it to close the distance on Iowa as the "Porkopolis" of the U.S. Had it not been for the passage of the 1997 moratorium on hog farms and increased public opposition to the swine industry, North Carolina could have been headed toward as many as 16 million head by the early part of the 21st century. In some counties, hogs already outnumber humans by more than 50 to 1 (Edwards and Ladd, 2001; Whittle, 1996). Moreover, the state's explosive growth in swine has also been marked by a dramatic restructuring and industrialization of its mode of production (Furuseth, 1997). The recent transformation of hog farming in North Carolina, beginning in the early 1980s, from small, local enterprises to large, multi-million dollar "hog factories" has paralleled national and global agro-industrialization trends and become one of the most contentious political conflicts in the state's recent history (Cecelski and Kerr, 1992; Ladd and Edwards, 2001; Lyson and Geisler, 1992; Molnar et al., 1997; Warrick and Stith, 1995). The average size of swine farms in the state has risen sixfold since 1989, while the number of farms dropped from at least 11,400 in 1982 to less than 2,400 permitted facilities (Edwards and Ladd, 2000). Moreover, about 95% of all production occurs on large, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) of over 2,000 hogs (Benjamin, 1997; Schaffer, 1997; Shiffer, 1999: 3A). In turn, swine operations have also beco me more geographically concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, which is now home to almost all of the state's regulated hog facilities (Edwards and Ladd, 2000). …