Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared on the website of Food & Water Action (our affiliated organization) at an earlier date.

Just a few decades ago, it was common for smaller, family-scale farms to raise a variety of crops and animals. But America’s rural landscape has become unrecognizable, as many family-scale farms have been replaced by factory operations. 

Factory farms confine thousands, even millions of animals in cramped conditions. They’re often owned by or contracted to sell to corporations. And they are transforming the economy and landscapes of rural America for the worse. 

Thanks to bad policy and rising corporate consolidation, the factory farm industry has exploded. And it continues to expand. Our recent research shows that in just five years (2017 to 2022), the number of factory-farmed animals in the U.S. increased by 97 million.

Now, there are 1.7 billion factory-farmed animals nationwide. Together, they produce more than double the waste of the entire U.S. human population. 

Iowa, ground zero for the boom in hog factory farms, illustrates this disturbing trend and its impacts on communities. While the hog industry claims it supports rural communities and creates jobs, the evidence suggests the opposite.

The factory farm model has devastated rural economies, leading to lower income for farmers, worse conditions for workers, and costly pollution for local communities.

The Economic Impact of the Factory Farm Boom

Forty years ago, Iowa was home to nearly 50,000 hog farms, each selling under 500 hogs per year on average. But the corporate takeover of the hog industry pushed a “Get Big or Get Out” agenda. This forced smaller farms to expand — or leave hog production altogether.

As a result, Iowa now has far more hogs than people, while the number of hog farms has plummeted by nearly 90% since 1982. Today, the average Iowa hog farm sells over 11,000 hogs per year.

This trend — larger and fewer farms, increasingly beholden to Big Ag — had knock-on effects on local economies. Factory farms tend to make fewer local purchases and hire fewer workers per hog sold compared to smaller operations. The factory farm boom is hollowing out rural communities.

In Iowa, counties that sold the most hogs and had the largest operations saw declines in median income and population from 1982 to 2017. These counties also lost more wage jobs and local businesses than the state average.

Over the same time period, the state as a whole lost 44% of farm jobs, with even greater losses in counties with the most hogs sold and the largest hog farms.

The corporate-run factory farm system has created a ruling class of hog bosses that are gobbling up the economic gains from their exploding industry. Small and medium-sized farmers and the rest of the community lose out.

This problem isn’t isolated to Iowa, either. Increasingly, research is linking factory farm growth with more poverty, economic inequality, outmigration, and more across rural America.

Farmers and Food Workers Lose Out

Over the decades, the prices paid to growers have fallen, while middlemen (often corporate slaughterhouses, processors, and retailers) have devoured extra profits. 

Compared to 1982, farmers in 2020 earned $2 less per pound of hog produced (adjusted for inflation). However, the price we pay at the grocery store fell by only $1. The middlemen are capturing the other $1. For beef, farmers’ share of retail prices fell from a high of 60% in 1984 to a low of 37% in 2021, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As a result, many farmers are struggling to stay afloat. The average wean-to-finish hog operation in Iowa didn’t even break even for half the years between 2004 and 2019. Between 2000 and 2021, the average U.S. dairy only broke even twice.

Workers, meanwhile, endure a litany of workplace hazards. Exposure to toxic poultry dust is linked to a slew of respiratory problems like asthma and chronic bronchitis. Jobs in meatpacking and poultry — part-and-parcel of the factory farm system — are some of the most dangerous in the country. Corporations looking to cut corners have made them so. 

Workers and farmers across rural America are feeling the devastating effects of more factory farms and more corporate power. Safe conditions for workers and fair prices for farmers would eat into Big Ag’s bottom line. 

The High Costs of Sickening Pollution

Finally, factory farms are a menace to health and the environment, especially their waste. In 2022, factory farms in Washington County, Iowa produced 156 times as much manure as the county’s human population and more than all people in Iowa combined. But unlike human sewage, hog and other livestock waste isn’t typically treated. Instead, it’s sprayed on farmland as “fertilizer.”

Worse, this waste is a burden, not a benefit. Factory farms produce and spray so much that nearby land can’t absorb it all. Instead, it runs off into our rivers and streams, contaminating waterways and shutting down beloved lakes and shores.

In some towns, it’s driving drinking water crises. In Eastern Oregon, mega-dairies have contributed to dangerous levels of nitrate contamination in communities’ groundwater for decades.

Given current U.S. regulations, it’s cheaper for factory farms to pollute than to clean up their acts. Instead, they let nearby communities pick up the tab. For example, some towns around the Great Lakes are spending big bucks to upgrade their drinking water systems in response to toxic algal blooms linked to factory farm pollution.

Losing one’s health or treasured lakes is priceless, but rural America is still paying to clean up factory farms’ messes. From healthcare, to bottled water, to lost revenue in fishing and tourism industries and much more, the costs of the factory farm model will grow as the industry does. But that’s no problem for the corporations that have taken advantage of policy and lax regulation to pass the bill to their neighbors.

Policy Got Us Into This Mess — Policy Can Get Us Out

Decades of bad policy have let factory farms off the hook for the harms, allowing them to grow in size and power. Lax antitrust enforcement has allowed Big Ag to take over the market and push out small- and medium-sized farms. Weak pollution regulations and enforcement allow factory farms to dump the costs of their pollution onto their neighbors. Incentives like artificially cheap grains have driven the factory farm model to new heights.

But we have the power to change these policies. We can illuminate the truth behind Big Ag’s lies of “economic prosperity” and fight for policies that will actually benefit rural America. From Oregon, to Iowa, to Maryland, Food & Water Watch is advocating for an end to factory farms. We’re also fighting government support for factory farm gas, which entrenches and worsens the factory farm model while threatening the climate.

At the national level, we’re supporting the Farm System Reform Act, which would help growers transition away from the factory farm model, hold factory farms accountable for their pollution, and level the playing field for small and medium-sized farmers. And we’re working with allies in Congress to pass a Farm Bill that puts families and farmers before Big Ag corporations.

It’s clear that the factory farm model is anti-farm and anti-farmer, and is just another means for agribusiness giants to extract wealth from communities. But together, we can end factory farms and bring real prosperity to rural America.