Can you say Hydrogen Sulfide gas.

your nose as you went by it.

as a little girl I loved our few pigs, but cleaning them out was something you did at warp-speed, holding your breath with each shovelful.

Of course it depends on the concentration, but hog manure will gag you. It's really bad.

I've had chickens for a couple of years, and sure, they smell really bad when it rains and your drainage isn't too good, but it makes me nauseous to drive past a hog farm.

A matter of personal preference I suppose. Horse manure after it has had a chance to dry out a little actually has kind of a pleasant odor, unless it gets saturated in which case it smells really bad too.

Now that's what I call investigative journalism, but I bet this won't be picked up by the MSM because these farms are located next to black and/or poor neighborhoods.

... To make it a federal offense to fly drones over farms.

Groups such as the National Pork Producers and Farm Bureau have small family farmers scared into believing that if the corporate mega farms are regulated, the smaller family farms will be regulated out of business.

Where every small farm had a diversity of crops and livestock and a way to market direct to the public and local processing and distribution.

There are young people interested in farming and we should be encouraging them and so should the government.
We need a billionaire to fund a project to re introduce local organic farming in communities all over our land...That is what it will take to stop this Frankenstein factory farming.
It is not really farming it is a factory that turns out flesh.

And you are 100% correct! Hell, we even send chickens to China to be processed, then sent back here. Those workers are paid so poorly that this is considered cost-effective!!

to the public at a farmers market....and it was all done humanely with free range chickens...just think of the energy wasted by shipping them to China and then back...it makes no sense.
I say cut out the middle men like Tyson Foods and pay it right to the small farmer...and that money stays right in the community.

And much more food-growing vs lawns and landscaping.

AND, a new law went into effect here this year that says a landlord can't evict a tenant based on the tenant growing food. It used to be that an apartment complex would allow flowers and stuff on the balcony, but not allow beans and other edibles. Those days are over!!

I grow a little bit of food on my tiny balcony. It's only enough to supplement my diet, maybe 0.001% of it, but it's so much fun!

farms. HUGE dairy farms that run their big trucks tractors all over the roads--ruin the roads and county too poor to pay for upkeep.

quite nice. It was a community. Then, these huge faceless outfits started moving in, buying up all the farms, huge trucks, the entire mega thing, and now when I've been back a few times all the small towns that used to be prosperous are now falling apart, the once prosperous stores are hollow buildings, many people look down and out, even the banks are gone. Downtowns look border deserted, nothing like it was years ago. And in manufacturing, all gone to China and wherever other than the US. This country continues to be gutted for the majority of Americans.

In the work that I do, I'm seeing a lot of interest from 2 main groups: young people and older folks from corporate America seeking a career change.

One of the problems we have in this country is that as family farms disappeared and corporate farming began to grow, a lot of the farming infrastructure disappeared. Things like meat processing facilities, canneries etc all went bye-bye. In the state of Georgia for example, there is absolutely nowhere in the state for a small poultry producer to take birds to have them legally processed for the table. You have to take them out of state which can kill your profit margins or process under the table.

The USDA has recognized this and is slowly making funds available for small to medium agriculture to rebuild this infrastructure but it will take some time

And another problem is land and how much it costs...not available to many people who don't have the means...most of the good farmland is owned by the corporate world and farmed that way.

But yes I see lots of the young interested in it too and that is reason to hope...I have said this for years.
People are poor because they have no land.

Has always been and will continue to be a problem. But I am seeing some interesting creative solutions being developed such as incubator farms and innovative uses of crowd funding to den with the land issues

It will be interesting to see how the current congress deals with SNAP and EBT. These programs combines with double your dollars programs like Wholesome Wave has helped to drive the growth of farmers markets into new areas especially poorer underserved ones. This in turn is creating new market opportunities for smaller farmers

Free capitalism will always be the best for everyone so don't worry, this problem will fix itself automatically!

why this stuff isnt used for something just mystifies me.

eta, i mean, put that stuff in an anaerobic digester at the least. capture the methane and ammonia.

Or as you say the methane and ammonia harvested as by-products instead of spaying in the air.

There should be some EPA action taken and arrests made.

Environmental racism indeed.

Spraying over fields that will be planted. You didn't think they sprayed it in the air and it just all blew away did you?

They're spraying it to empty the huge pond of waste before it overflows but the spray is going on people's houses, clothes lines, yards, pets, etc.

It's not about fertilizing the fields it's about emptying waste pond.

I would think they would package the fertilizer as a by-product of the pig operation instead of indiscriminately spraying it in the air where the wind blows it over people and their houses.

would be great fertilizer.

Consider the source.

I had organic pork when I had my country place, back in the late 70's/early 80's.
Unbelievable flavor in the eggs, milk, pork and chicken.

There's a guy 40 miles from me, across the line in Fla. who sells his own pork, and it works out to 8.00 a pound.
The grass fed beef I got this summer was 4.25 hanging weight, so cut and wrapped was quite a bit higher.

Luckily I can have chickens here in town..

And that envy may disappear
People always ask, do you miss them? I say no, I got sick and tired of their shit!

I kept mine confined but with deep bedding and lots of room. But too much labor. Want to put them out to pasture for better welfare and less labor. That wont be for a few years as I have a ways to go to get there - land prep, fencing , etc.. But this coming spring just a couple pigs for myself only.

For your health and peace of mind, do not drive east on I 40 and cross I 95. You will soon smell the reason why.

Waste was sent 500 ft into the air.

The waste is high in nitrogen and would be a valuable fertilizer. First, however, it would have to be dried and that is expensive.

Reason it is stored till then is you can only spread it at certain times of the year depending on your crop roation.

My son had posted earlier today, and I felt compelled to post it myself. I HATE posting depressing crap, but this seems like the word needs to get out.

bet many are only interested in profits for them, whomever, whatever and their cronies, many IMO would never do anything about this, for example. Some certainly would, but the majority, I doubt it.

Also, pick your favorite environmental group and send them this, and ask for ACTION. As for me, no thanks on the pork products, or other animal based foods.

But little chance of that since the mainstream Media is totally corporate and monopolistic like the super banks and mega corps that own about every consumer product we use from crackers and soda to Pepto Bismol and Duracell batteries.

In 2012 there was an excellent article with graphs that you can find online by googling, '10 Companies Own Practically Everything We Consume'. It covers;

-Media cos. that control 90% of what we read, see or hear-
Comcast, News Corp (Fox), Viacom, Time Warner, Disney.

-the super Banks;
JP Morgan, Citibank, BoA, Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman

-Consumer products;
P & G, Unilever, Kellogg, Mars, General Mills, Pepsi, Coca Cola and 3 others I can't recall.

I'm a vegetarian mostly for two years, was never a big meat eater, can't digest it and got sick with dysentery in S.A. when younger. I can live w/o meat easily, enjoy dairy occasionally if it's organic.

in reality and how rigged capitalism fences them in.

big pancake breakfast, tours, all the pols show up....

somehow we never go to one of these places

is way down!

The stench was incredible! I can't imagine having to smell that filthy odor 24/7!

I bet with the GOP clown car in control, flying a drone over a factory farm will soon be a felony.

The horror of factory farming.

Book marking to watch later.

People are kept in the dark about where their meat and food comes from for a reason.

Wait a second, the picture on the box my butter came in shows a picture of an old-fashioned farm. Isn't that where the cows that make my butter live? The styrofoam container my eggs come in have a picture of a similar looking farm stamped on it too!!

That would seriously disrupt people and their diets if they actually knew what sorts of places their food comes from.


If only there was a way to spread the word to the masses without depending on traditional media outlets...

for years.

This is what will happen if the TPP passes. Foreign Corps can violate our environmental laws right now, as someone said, the TPP will be NAFTA on steroids!

Disgusting and should be totally illegal. But our China 'business partnership' trumps American sovereignty.

These businesses are just trying to make a profit. And, according to pro-business Republican ethics, any chance of profit makes the activity ethical. Therefore, if it helps this business make a penny more of profit, then it is morally righteous for them to spray pig poop all over the neighborhood. If the neighbors don't like it, they have the freedom to move someplace cleaner. Maybe they should try a gated community on a golf course. Oh, the neighbors are poor people? Well, who cares, then? If poor people complain, it's envy and class warfare. And in class warfare, the rich always win. Wait, is that a guillotine I see coming over the hill?

but I could be persuaded because of stuff like this.

I already can't stand pork or ham ...it sickens my stomach. After this i think bacon is off my list too.

of stuff like this. I'm not a vegetarian, yet, but stuff like this gets to me, the cruelty of it all. It is unnecessary.

The little dots are cows...



And guess what's in this lake?



And this one:



http://mic.com/articles/95864/striking-satellite-photos-show-what-the-meat-industry-is-really-doing-to-america

The Google Maps pics have been deleted BTW.