The smell will permeate your car vents and sit in your nose for miles after you’ve passed it. If one were to drive through the Texas panhandle, they’d understand how the stench that only thousands of animals can produce stalls in the air. From Abilene through Amarillo, industrial hog and cattle farms scatter the landscape and generate copious controversy in the area. Not only do they stink, but the dust kicked up from equipment and livestock forms a brown haze that lingers in the air and can be seen from miles away. The obvious physical presence of this industry has raised many concerns about its environmental and public health impacts. These operations also generate invisible influences on markets and local economies.
The United States’ agricultural system has undergone a series of changes and transformations. Local, small, family farms are now colossal operations of monocultures, operating with heavy equipment and chemical fertilizers. Just as this modernization has occurred in crops like corn, wheat, and soy, animal agriculture has also industrialized. Systems of open space grazing for poultry or cattle have all but disappeared in the name of mass production, space conservation, and uniformity. Now, operations that accumulate animals, and their waste, in a confined area are quickly becoming the standard. These enterprises were designed to grow livestock as quickly and cheaply as possible and are called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The EPA defines CAFOs as “high-density operations” where a minimum of 1000 animals, usually cattle, are “housed for at least 45 days,” usually in an indoor climate with limited ventilation, mobility, and care.
The panhandle of Texas is categorized by its geographical location in Northern Texas, but also its stretching plains, cotton fields, and oil rigs. An area also known for ranching and generational, family operations has slowly transformed into a landscape saturated with large-scale factory hog and cattle farming in the form of CAFOs. How have local economies built on family ranches responded to this increased industry presence? CAFOs, because of their unique ability to house an abundance of livestock, can produce pork, beef, or dairy at much cheaper prices per unit. This drives small farms out of the market by making their prices less competitive. In Texas, larger, private, subsidized corporations have made the market unaffordable for smaller, family-owned businesses. The local economic concerns of job loss and market distortion are only a fraction of the equation however.
The increased number of industrialized animal agricultural operations has led to the deterioration of surrounding communities’ air, water, and soil and minimized many rural Texas panhandle citizen’s quality of life through pollution exposure and health concerns. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has qualified CAFOs as a pollutive industry, primarily when it comes to groundwater, due to the accumulation of untreated manure or waste and its ability to disrupt and leach into surrounding soils and water systems. While many believe manure to be a natural product that would not harm the environment, excess amounts of animal waste is highly concentrated with different nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. If unnatural levels of these nutrients seep into soil or run into waterways, they will disrupt the balanced composition of the ecosystem, either by killing key microorganisms or contaminating the water for wildlife that rely on it.
Air quality reductions have also been reported in communities within a few mile radius of animal feeding operations, specifically due to an increase of Particulate Matter 2.5. PM2.5 is one of the primary air pollutants qualified by the EPA, originating from dust, soot, fecal matter, and dirty energy emissions. Increased levels of PM2.5 can cause asthma, throat irritation, eye irritation, and serious lung complications for citizens in the surrounding areas of concentrated animal feedlots. Smell is also a common issue for those in the surrounding areas of feedlots and CAFOS. The ammonia, generated from excess nitrogen in animal waste, in combination with PM2.5 is what generates the visible ‘dust clouds’ surrounding CAFOs.
After conducting research on all of the human and environmental impacts of CAFOs, the EPA expanded the 1972 Clean Water Act to include CAFOs as a “point source” of pollution and categorized them as an industry in need of monitoring and regulation. In Texas, the TCEQ, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is responsible for general permits for CAFOs in Texas. While this agency does require treatment of some waste and outlines a few “nutrient management plans,” it follows a pattern of finite regulation in regards to factory farming and environmental contamination, in particular in its allowance of waste discharging into water systems during storms.
Because of a lack of regulatory enforcement, the commercial animal agricultural industry has expanded, especially in states with limited penalties for pollution. The accumulation of this industry in certain areas is reminiscent of a “race to the bottom scenario” in which industries flock to states with fewer regulations or limited fining practices. Texas Environmental boards, like the TCEQ provide few limitations on pollutive practices, so the panhandle of Northern Texas has a key location for this agricultural industry. What other factors make this area of Texas such a perfect location for this industry?
The panhandle of Texas is almost wholly comprised of small towns. While the 41 county panhandle makes up 15% of the state’s land, it only accounts for less than 3% of the state’s population. As well as being primarily geographically rural, around 70% of the High Plains region, or panhandle, have not completed a higher level of educational attainment beyond secondary school. This majority demographic earns an average of $38,000 annually, which is only $3,000 above the US Census’ Bureau’s poverty threshold for annual income. Due to this area’s lack of urban sites, which typically come with a variety of public services, and its status as a low-income location with a population of limited education, the CAFO industry has found the Texas panhandle to be the perfect cocktail of minimal resistance to industry and maximum profit.This is defined as an industry’s tendency to take the “path of least resistance.” Texas CAFOs have accumulated in the High Plains Region because the animal agriculture business has specifically picked an area that lacks the political or physical capital to fight for their right to safe water, soils, and air and challenge large corporate actors.
Those who feel animal agriculture is harmful and environmentally taxing feel that the cost-benefit analysis of this issue is not being run honestly. The anti-CAFO movement understands that so many factors are not being considered within the true ‘price’ of this industry and believe newer systems can arise that meet the needs of more people in a safe, ethical, just way.
Whichever avenue the meat market follows, it will need to be sustainable for a rapidly changing political and physical climate. Animal agriculture is an issue that will continue to be legislated on. CAFOs specifically are incredibly politicized and environmental or public health policy relating to the industry greatly relies on parties or politicians in power. In order to keep this issue at the center of conversations and policy windows, act in any way you can, at the community or local level, and hold politicians accountable for their responsibility to ensure the health and environmental safety of their constituents.
