Addressing State Impacts of CAFOs

The Problem with CAFOs: Overview

What is a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)?

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), often referred to as factory farms, house millions of animals in warehouses or feedlots the size of football fields. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) as a facility where animals are confined for 45 days or more in any 12-month period and where no vegetation grows.^[1] By definition, a CAFO has the potential to – and often does– pollute the surrounding area.^[2]

The impacts of these facilities, which operate more like factories than farms, are numerous and well documented. CAFOs harm rural communities’ air, water, health; tank economic viability and property values; jeopardize the security of our food system; and disregard the welfare of the animals they produce. In CAFOS, animals are crowded together, fed a diet that can contain growth hormones or antibiotics, and their waste is stored in piles or open pits until it is spread, untreated, on farm fields as “fertilizer,” often at a greater rate than the land can absorb.

The scale at which animals are confined in CAFOs across America’s rural landscape is astounding. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture 2022 census, the nation has 24,000 factory farms, holding 1.7 billion animals at any one time. Together these facilities produce 940 billion pounds of manure each year — twice as much as the sewage produced by the entire U.S. population.  While human waste is treated before disposal, there are not similar requirements for animal waste.

In the past two decades, the number of animals in CAFOS has nearly doubled, reflecting a larger pattern of consolidation and corporatization in agriculture. The rapid increase in numbers of animals being raised in CAFOs reflects a seismic shift across rural America: from many farmers raising a few or few dozen livestock as part of a diversified farm to relatively few contract growers raising hundreds or hundreds of thousands of animals often owned by corporations in factory-style conditions. The few companies at the top of the agriculture sector hold most of the control and reap an ever-larger share of the profits from meat and egg production than do those that work at the facilities. This change has had profound impacts on rural communities and on the fabric of the whole nation.

The agriculture industry touts CAFOs as the most efficient and cost-effective way to raise protein, but “efficiency” obscures many real externalized costs that fall to communities and farmers while a select few corporations benefit.

• Economics: In many places, CAFOs have completely changed the rural landscape. Small and medium-sized independent farmers can no longer compete in a political and economic system that favors huge operations. As farms have consolidated and CAFOs have replaced diversified operations, the whole rural economy has changed. In a CAFO-dominated landscape, local buyers have been replaced by multinational corporations, meaning farmers have a harder time finding buyers for their goods for a competitive price – for example, in any given county, there is no longer a market to sell a few hogs and there is only one buyer for grain. Furthermore, the livestock industry is so vertically and horizontally consolidated that the three largest beef companies – Tyson, JBS, and Cargill – control 70% of the beef market, and control significant stakes in the pork and chicken industries as well.^[3] With no independent local market, farmers have no choice but to take the price these companies offer and are often forced into exploitative contracts with industry behemoths. Across much of the country, two generations of farmers have found that the only way they can keep farming is to “get big or get out” and build animal confinement barns, raising animals by the thousands.
• Water & Air Quality: The sheer concentrated amount of manure produced by CAFOs makes manure management extremely challenging for CAFO operators. Manure leaks and spills from CAFOs regularly pollute surface and groundwater with nitrates, phosphates, and dangerous bacteria like E. coli, while ammonia gas and particulate matter from CAFOs can cause serious health problems for CAFO workers as well as those living and working nearby.^[4] CAFOs are also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions but are also frequently exempted from states’ climate reduction plans.^[5]
• Public Health: The CAFO system is a serious and emergent threat to our public health. Epidemiologists and microbiologists have long warned that CAFO conditions create the perfect breeding ground for new diseases that could spread from animals to humans, triggering a global pandemic at any time, as well as for development of deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains, which can also transfer from animals to humans.^[6],^[7],^[8] As major rain events become stronger and more frequent, another public health concern is the contamination of floodwater by overtopped manure storage lagoons.^[9]
• Environmental Injustice: Factory farms disproportionately impact poor and working class communities, from majority Black and Indigenous communities overloaded with hog CAFOs in North Carolina, Hispanic farmworker towns in Arizona whose air is noxious from egg laying barns’ emissions, or rural white Iowa communities with dangerous nitrate levels in their wells from hog barns.^[10] The agribusiness industry often targets CAFO expansion in regions with populations who hold little political power and have few mechanisms under the law to resist their construction.
• Animal Welfare: CAFOs cram thousands of animals together in cruel conditions for the sake of corporate profit. Factory farmed animals are bred to put on weight quickly, causing numerous health problems.^[11] They live their short lives in close quarters with hundreds or thousands of other animals, sometimes in tiny cages too small to even turn around, breathing their own waste, not eating a natural diet, and without the ability to express their natural behaviors. Compare that with independent farmers and ranchers raising animals regeneratively on pasture where livestock can express their natural behaviors and participate in a regenerative ecological cycle.^[12]

In the current livestock industry – and across the agriculture sector – there are winners and losers. If rural communities, the environment, public health, and animal welfare are the losers, the clear winners are the titans of the animal agribusiness industry.

Industrial aquaculture

Industrial aquaculture facilities (fish farms) can be considered the “factory farms” of the sea, posing similar environmental and economic threats to the local ecosystem and community.

As in land-based industrial livestock operations, industrially-farmed fish are densely stocked in floating open-water pens. These facilities come with a host of problems for the ocean environment, local fishing economies, and our food system.^[13] They discharge untreated fish waste and uneaten food directly into natural waters and require extensive use of antibiotics and pesticides to control sea lice and other diseases. Despite company assurances about the security of the nets, there have been large-scale escapes of farmed fish, which can threaten the health of wild, native fish. These operations also attract marine mammal predators, changing their behavior; seabirds; and other wildlife that can become entangled and die in the nets.

Open-net salmon farming is the fastest-growing food production industry in the world, and it is expanding in US waters largely due to the lack of laws and regulations. US lawmakers should take note from communities fighting this extractive industry around the world.^[14],^[15] For example, Argentina banned aquaculture after witnessing the destruction that salmon farms caused in Chile’s coastal communities and marine environment. Norway imposed a tax on salmon farm companies operating within their waters. Canada has stopped renewing permits for marine aquaculture. Countries around the world recognize the negative impacts of finfish aquaculture; the United States can too.

States are on the frontlines of the expansion of industrial aquaculture and state policymakers and officials have an important role to play in regulating industrial aquaculture within state waters. For more information about working on aquaculture issues in your state, reach out to the SiX Agriculture and Food Systems team.

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Why states? Why now?

All of these harms expose a simple truth: the policies meant to protect our air, water, rural economies, health, animal welfare and independent farmers are at best inadequate and at worst, reinforcing a system of winners and losers. Thanks to industry influence, factory farms in many states are exempt from local and state regulations that apply to other polluting industries, while federal regulations like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act that could protect independent farmers, ranchers, and rural communities are frequently unenforced.^[16],^[17],^[18]

Farmers and rural communities are often caught in situations shaped by distant policymakers who promote agribusiness-friendly policies that have led to poorer, smaller, and less autonomous communities. Decades of corporate-backed federal policies have set a weak foundation, which state-level agricultural policies have often reinforced.

How to use this toolkit:

Today’s CAFO system was built over decades and is backed by powerful interests, so unraveling it will be a long-term effort. This toolkit is intended to help you as a state policymaker to navigate the opportunities and challenges of working on state-level CAFO policy and regulation in your legislature and community.

In this toolkit, you’ll hear from community leaders and state legislators about working on CAFO issues, find strategy and organizing resources, and develop skills to engage rural communities in combating CAFO expansion and control in your state.

The ideas presented here are not exhaustive and are meant to be used as inspiration. It is always recommended that you work closely with those most impacted to understand and strategize within the unique context of laws and regulations in your state.

While we discuss some specific policies, the focus of this toolkit is on organizing strategies.

The toolkit is divided into two parts, one public and the other password-protected for state legislators only.

• Public: Background on CAFO impacts, corporate influences, policies that limit local community control, and connections between CAFO issues and other topics.
• For state legislators only: State-based case studies, alternative policies, strategies to support small and mid-sized farmers, tools for communication and narrative-building, and partner resources. Legislators can click here to schedule a meeting with the SiX Agriculture and Food Systems team and discuss how you can take action on CAFO issues in your state.

The CAFO Landscape: Corporate Power and Policy

The Corporate Agribusiness Model: Who Are the Players?

With the tremendous influence of corporate money and power on policy at all levels of government, an enduring question for many legislators is how to ensure community voices are centered in policymaking. Solutions to this problem require that policymakers not only build trust with communities but also understand how corporate influence has shaped agriculture policy to prioritize profit over public interest. Organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF, or known simply as the Farm Bureau) play a significant role in advancing a corporate agenda in state policy making while silencing community voices in the process.

• ALEC is a very influential corporate think tank and policy shop that promotes corporate-friendly legislation in state legislatures.^[20] Founded in the 1970s and funded by major players like the Koch family, ALEC works with corporate partners to craft model legislation that supports their interests.^[21] Legislators in statehouses nationwide introduce these “cookie-cutter” bills as “public policy innovations,” often without disclosing corporate involvement. Corporations themselves can pay to be members of ALEC, using money to directly influence state legislatures. ALEC claims over 1,000 such bills are introduced each year, covering a variety of topics from abortion to agriculture to privatization of public goods and services.^[22]
• The American Farm Bureau Federation is a dominant corporate force in U.S. agriculture policy at both the state and federal level. Despite branding itself as the “voice of agriculture,” the Farm Bureau primarily represents large agribusiness interests, whose goals are often at odds with independent family farmers. AFBF claims to represent over five million farmers, but the majority of those “farmer members” are actually just individuals who have purchased Farm Bureau insurance or associated products. With these inflated membership numbers, the AFBF has advocated for weaker child labor protections, opposed both the Voting Rights Act of 1965^[23] and the Affordable Care Act,^[24] and consistently promotes policy positions that support large agribusinesses over those that could help smaller independent farms remain viable.

Connections: BIOGAS and Waste-to-Energy

Biogas, also called renewable natural gas (RNG), is touted as an environmentally-friendly energy solution, and it’s become big business, garnering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state grants, loans, and tax credits. But a close look at biogas reveals that it is far less green than proponents would like you to believe.^[25]

Biogas is made from the anaerobic digestion of organic material like animal manure or crop residues. The gas is further refined into biomethane, which can be used in vehicles or to heat homes.

The emerging threat of biogas, a result of the unholy alliance between Big Oil and Gas and Big Ag, presents further challenges for our movements to build a truly green future for our communities.

Furthermore, the narrative around biogas is confusing and conflicting, making it hard for state legislators and communities to really understand the impacts of biogas on their communities.

Here are four myths about biogas:

The CAFO Policy Landscape:

There are numerous examples of state-level CAFO policies that have exemptions, loopholes, or are inadequately designed. Some policies are purposefully designed to benefit corporate industrial agribusiness interests at the expense of independent farmers and rural communities. Many of these policies are framed by the corporations as being pro-farmer, misleading farmers, rural communities, and state lawmakers alike. Corporations that are looking to build CAFOs in rural communities particularly benefit from the following types of state policies.

• Policies that Protect Agribusiness’ “Right to Farm”: “Right to Farm” (RTF) laws exist in some form in all fifty states. Industry claims that RTF laws were originally designed to protect existing farmers from nuisance complaints and legal action from neighbors who may have recently moved to a farming area and been unused to the sounds and smells of a working farm. However, in many states, these preemption laws are used to protect new CAFOs against farmers and communities that have been in the area for generations. The strictest RTF laws tie the hands of local or county governments by preempting regulation of agriculture practices, while shielding bad actors from accountability or legal recourse, allowing for the rapid growth of CAFOs across the country. Despite pushback from rural communities and local governments around the country, RTF laws continue to be promoted and strengthened at the state level thanks to industry pressure.
• Policies that Eliminate Local Control: Similar to RTF, agribusiness interests in some states have sought to eliminate local control over CAFO siting or other agricultural issues. For example, county health boards in Missouri historically held binding authority over the siting of large CAFOs. After years of unsuccessful attempts by agribusiness-connected state lawmakers to weaken local control through the legislative process, the state passed a preemption law in 2019 through a constitutional amendment that prohibits counties from imposing stricter CAFO standards than the state.^[26]
• Policies that Expose Whistleblowers: “Ag-gag” is the nickname given to a variety of laws to prevent whistleblowers from exposing inhumane animal treatment. Supporters say they protect farmers from bad press, but these laws are promoted by agribusiness interests seeking to avoid scrutiny of animal welfare in CAFOs. More than 20 states have proposed some form of ag-gag law, and six states have approved one.^[27] The laws range from outlawing unapproved photos to requiring that inhumane animal treatment be reported immediately (which prevents gathering evidence over time for prosecution) to criminalizing taking a job under false pretenses, which some whistleblowers do to collect evidence.
• Policies that Exempt Agribusiness from Taxes: States offer tax exemptions and abatements for a wide range of agricultural activities. These include exemptions for costs specifically associated with CAFOs, such as manure storage, giving CAFOs a tax advantage over pasture-based livestock operations. Tax exemptions reduce revenue to the state and county, while CAFOs themselves put extra strain on local resources, with additional wear on country roads, water use, and potential need for pollution remediation. Iowa has reported a loss of $4.5 million in county revenue due to CAFO property tax exemptions.^[28]
• Policies that Pay Agribusiness to Pollute: The Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) of the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) provides funds to farm operations to implement environmentally sustainable practices. CAFOs access millions of dollars of EQIP funds for pollution control measures such as upgraded manure storage, but storing manure in a better kind of pit does not make CAFOs environmentally sustainable.^[29] Additionally, manure-to-energy projects (biogas digesters) are rarely economically feasible without public subsidies. They require an enormous volume of manure in order to operate. While manure-based biogas is touted as being environmentally sustainable and has even been included in some states’ renewable energy portfolios and even received tax credits, its development actually requires CAFO expansion.^[30] Manure-to-energy projects are generally a way for CAFOs to externalize costs of productions onto the public. (see box on biogas above)

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Connections: LABOR

CAFOs often promise rural communities a surge in good job opportunities, but in reality, CAFO jobs are limited in number and undesirable, often filled by low-cost labor from outside the area, including immigrants, people of color, prisoners, and sometimes even children. Industrial agribusiness relies on these exploitative labor practices and specifically targets vulnerable populations for these dangerous positions as a key means of maintaining maximum corporate profits at the expense of people and communities.

• Contract Growers: Contract growers enter into contracts with agribusiness entities like Tyson and Foster Farms (called “integrators”) to grow out the animals to market weight.^[31] The integrator provides the animals and feed, and the grower must follow their instructions for housing and care. Contract growers generally take on significant debt to build barns while the contract offered by the integrator often makes no long-term guarantee. The grower takes on all the risk and is beholden to a rigged system designed to maximize the integrator’s profits and punish those who speak out.^[32]
• Prison Labor: All 50 states have a prison work program allowing prisoners to work for mere cents (or sometimes not get paid at all) in undesirable jobs or dangerous industries, including CAFOs and other agriculture jobs.^[33] These programs are completely legal under a loophole in the 13th amendment that allows for what is essentially slave labor as a punishment for a crime. Black and brown people of color are disproportionately overrepresented in the U.S. carceral system resulting in an overrepresentation of these populations in these work programs. Numerous human rights abuses have been documented in these programs with little recourse available for those incarcerated. In some cases, prisoners are even punished for refusing to work agricultural jobs. Some states have started to take notice and are now banning slavery as a form of punishment.^[34]
• Child Labor: Numerous investigations have found children working in dangerous jobs in the animal agriculture industry, sometimes with fatal consequences.^[35] At one Southern California poultry plant, federal investigators found children as young as 14 deboning chickens and operating forklifts outside of allowable work hours.^[36] Agricultural industry groups are outspoken proponents of weakening child labor protections. They point to child labor protections as being burdensome for family farmers when, in truth, these groups represent multinational agribusiness corporations. Groups opposing a proposed federal rule to increase child protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act in 2011 included some of the biggest actors in the industry, such as pesticide trade group CropLife America, the National Cotton Council, and the American Farm Bureau Federation.^[37]

Check out further resources on labor exploitation in the food system here.

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