In Greeley County in western Kansas, voters last week
overturned a 12-year-old referendum that prohibited large hog
farms from locating there.
But in northwest Missouri, a new health ordinance in Andrew
County now limits where factory farms can build.
The struggle over huge livestock farms continues to roil in
Missouri and Kansas, and no wonder - a new report shows the two
states in the middle of the growing concentration of factory
farming.
The report, "Factory Farm Nation, How America Turned its
Livestock Farms Into Factories," includes a map that pinpoints
the areas nationally, by state and county, with the highest
numbers of factory farm livestock. The northern half of Missouri
is heavy on hogs; feedlot cattle are predominant in Kansas.
Closer to Kansas City, Missouri counties with large hog farms
include Cass, Lafayette, Johnson, Ray and Platte. On the Kansas
side, Douglas and Atchison counties have the highest
concentrations of feedlot cattle.
The report was produced by Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit
organization that advocates safe food policies.
Factory farms have displaced many small farmers, according to
the report.
"Rural America is going to hell in a handbasket," said Rhonda
Perry of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, which supports
independent producers and small farmers.
In Missouri, there are 90 percent fewer independent hog farmers
than in the mid-1980s, but the number of hogs being produced in
the state has stayed relatively the same, said Perry, a
livestock farmer.
Leslie Holloway, the Missouri Farm Bureau's state and local
governmental affairs director, questioned the report's
conclusions. She said new census information showed that there
was growth of both small and large farms. And many of the new
farms tend to be smaller.
"The ultimate objective by many of the proponents of the report
and reports like this are driven by the belief that livestock
operations should be of a certain size for whatever reason,"
Holloway said.