Original subtitles

[John] How we doing?

[Gary] I'm doing just fine.

[John] Good to meet ya, I'm John Ikerd.

[Gary] Yes.

[John] I heard about you from Diane Rosenberg.

Oh yeah.

It's good to be able to come out and meet ya.

You know and see what's going on out here.

- Happy to meet you to you. - See what you're doing.

- You bet. - Good to meet you.

This one over here is 750 foot from our house.

That one is exactly the same, 750 feet.

[John] 750 feet, huh?

One reason why we moved here 'cause I wanted to keep this

in our family name. - Right.

The first five years, there was nothing but a corn field

across the road.

It was beautiful out here.

And just. - Right.

But they've ruined it for us now.

The first thing you do is you go outside

and you smell the order.

And you think, how in the hell did this ever happen?

You know, why did this happen?

Right.

[Gary] Everybody has a right to make a living.

But not in such a way that it destroys

somebody else's quality of life.

[John] Yeah.

I went down and they were working on this driveway

for this building here.

I asked him, what are you doing?

And he said, well we're gonna build hog houses here.

I said well why didn't you tell us?

[John] Right.

(pensive music)

[Earl] We must learn in this next generation,

how to feed as many more people

as we have learned to feed since the dawn of history.

[John] Of my 30 year academic career,

I spent roughly the first half

as a live stock marketing specialist.

[Earl] We have applied brain power and ingenuity

to this biological process we call agriculture

in a free society. (plane soaring)

[John] We were going to make good food affordable

for everyone.

I believed that,

until about the 1980's.

(pensive music)

Here I was in a situation,

desperate financial dire straights.

Like mom said, there was many sleepless nights.

I began to realize the farmers

that were the biggest trouble

were the ones who had been doing the things

that we so called experts had been telling them to do.

(crowd faintly chattering)

I said there's something fundamentally wrong

with this kind of agriculture.

It is a social justice issue.

We're head toward an agriculture

that a very few people will own.

Then I began to look around,

I could see what that was doing to rural communities

that depended upon those farms,

that the social and cultural life of the community.

Rural communities were dying.

(reflective music)

(suspenseful music)

[Reporter] Residents in Buffalo, North Dakota

spoke up tonight

about the potential of a farm filled

with 9,000 pigs moving in just south of town.

(suspenseful music)

[John] This kind of agriculture that we created

is really sort of an industrial model of production.

[Reporter] Some residents were warned

that a confined animal feeding operation could

be making its way to their back yard.

About 90 to 95% of all the animal products

that we've consumed to date

comes from these large concentrated

animal feeding operations

which are known as CAFOs.

[Reporter] Some folks in North Carolina

claim a food company is dumping waste

right on their doorsteps.

When you concentrate all of these animals,

just as there is in any factor,

there's also a waste stream.

This size facility could generate in the range

of 40 millions gallons of liquid manure a year.

That waste is potentially toxic to humans

and is a legitimate public health threat.

The odor is increasing everyday.

There is times during the day that'll burn your throat.

Do you think they want to go out at night

when they're gonna smell hog manure?

(dramatic music)

The inadequacies of government regulations

go back to what's called right to farm laws.

Those laws are determined by the people

that have the political and economic influence

in agriculture.

They said they want to be good neighbors

and they're just not acting as good neighbors.

[John] We've taken the right to farm to the point

where it's usually be called the right to harm.

The right to take away other people's rights.

(pensive music)

The Department of Natural Resources has set this place

and time for a hearing on the intent

to reissue a permit to S&S Jerseyland Dairy, LLC.

So now I will call on members of the public

who've indicated that they wish to testify.

My name is Ben Poster.

I live at 8026.

I'm actually a next door neighbor of S&S Egg Enterprises.

It's lowered my property value probably to,

might as well just live in the rest of my life.

It ain't worth nothing to sell it to anybody.

When you get all this power and all this money,

how are you gonna treat the rest of us?

I mean you've never had this conversation.

You want to have this conversation now?

Let's have it.

My name is Nancy Utesch.

I'm here today because I love the landscape

here in northeast Wisconsin.

And I love the people that reside on it.

We are subject to the failings of the government agencies

that have left us threatened where we live.

(pensive music)

Our family's beginning with this would be

in 2004 when the Treml Family was poisoned.

There was an infant in intensive care.

It was due to contaminated water.

It was a tragedy.

It really kind of shocked our family.

To me, farming was about purity really.

Through time, we just saw these continued water issues

and so I think it's really time for the community

to say you know, why is this still happening?

We need to get a change in Madison.

Okay, the third sentence in the Animal Facility Sighting law

states no county, town, village or municipality

shall deny a permit for a CAFO or for an expansion.

What kind of crap is that?

It strips all local control out of our hands.

We don't have a damn leg to stand on.

And it really, really pisses me off!

We've had people dig wells and dig wells

and dig wells, they keep on going deeper and deeper.

Last for about a year.

And then it gets contaminated again.

We're swimming in this shit.

And I'll tell you what, I'm tired of it.

(pensive music)

We are in Tonopah, Arizona.

Tonopah is about 70 miles from Phoenix.

We're going to start a complex kind of matrix

of all of the different kind of complaints and health,

the timing of those complaints.

A sign went up before anything else.

You know there was just a sign out there

that said, Desert Pride Farms.

But no notice to the public,

no notice to the neighbors that this was happening

or what kind of facility.

Anything like that.

I noticed fly in my ice tea

and I notice a fly, I mean it absolutely horrible.

If you can't go outside and garden or barbecue

or enjoy the weather,

boy that just takes away the big advantage to being here.

(rapid ambient music)

We are heading to the Hickman's egg plant facility

in Arlington.

(rapid ambient music)

These 13 chicken barns that are over here.

That's about four million chickens.

Arlington has the processing plant

with all the fertilizers so they're turning it

and drawing it.

Neighbors already have filed a complaint

alleging that the manure smell and the dust is inescapable.

My wife's uncle says two o'clock,

total pop twisters are coming through.

There's people that live 10 to 12 miles away

and they can smell it.

At this end are the push fan.

So toxic for the chickens.

They've got to have the air moving out all the time.

I don't know that I've spent this much time out here.

It's starting to make me feel sick to my stomach, really.

(rapid ambient music)

[Reporter] And a very vocal group of citizens in Tonopah

have filed a lawsuit against Hickman Family Egg Farm

claiming the company is a poor corporate neighbor.

The county has written their permit in such a way

that they are not counting the emissions

that come out of the chicken houses.

[Reporter] The elected official

who represents their district

is also a co-owner of the farm and they call it,

a conflict of interest.

The Tonopah facility was built to house eggs

that they can send into California.

The blue prints for the egg factory called

for building 27 chicken lay houses each,

a whopping 59,000 square feet.

The last two buildings, they've been framed like that

close to six months.

And so we think we've slowed them just a little bit.

(rapid ambient music)

(insects chirping)

On the one side, it shows you ever item you will need

to take out for water monitoring.

Name, address, phone number, township and section number

for each facility that you're going to sample.

Okay, hold your bottle up here.

And you're gonna match it to which ever one it's closest to.

What do you guys think?

Well most likely that,

it's still got a little bit of purple to it.

[Maria] This is what I found in every single community.

[Assistant] What is he testing for right, ammonia?

Ammonia.

And every community ask me this question.

Okay, so they're within limit.

How can we beat this?

What are our chances of beating it?

The folks that are on the ground,

you're the eyes and ears to protect,

you know, your neighbors, your waterways, everything.

It's your voice and your community that will

be the determination of what happens here.

So see this, I mean it's so simple.

Here's just a group of citizens trying to live their life,

being impacted now all of a sudden

by this massive problem that they know is going

to be life changing to their communities.

(pensive music)

(birds squawking)

So here's Sam Burley's house.

Poultry has been around for decades and decades

on the eastern shore.

Now here comes the odors.

Now all of a sudden, we're seeing where industries

literally changing its model.

Who's gonna buy this house?

Who would ever buy this house?

Now they're putting 600 foot poultry confinement houses,

edge to edge on the property.

They're calling them no land farms.

There and again, economic development, right?

Economic development.

You can't smell without getting sick.

Throat burning, you get the eyes burning.

You get asthma triggers, rashes.

The sour smell of mortality,

that's dead poultry that you're smelling.

This is how you become a victim.

For years, for years,

this was my life.

These things destroy lives.

They destroy families.

My husband, the long term health affects, he's still got.

We are at my old house.

(somber music)

There's a feed lot and there's four houses

behind the big barn.

I still have a house that I can't sell,

that I'm paying taxes on.

See this, I had somebody come in and paint.

The light must be burned out.

I had...

Things started happening, rashes all the time.

This was our dream home.

This is where we were gonna be.

Michael, he would get off the school bus

and he would literally, he would vomit

because the stench was so bad.

When he took a bath, he came out and immediately,

his body started blistering.

We took him to the doctor.

And the doctor said,

I need you to do a test to see if he has cancer.

Well, nothing shakes a mother's world like that.

And that was it.

That was the day I said, gone, gone, gone, gone, we're gone.

And we left.

(pensive music)

One day you see a beautiful corn field.

And the next day, you got 10 poultry houses

and like where was my opportunity to participate

in whether or not I'd want that in my community.

People's health is being jeopardized

because of the exposures.

You know, science doesn't lie.

You have the parcelization from the chicken litter

when it becomes wind blown, you breath it in,

you will have some of the same the health effects,

heart disease, asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer.

The problem is the EPA and state agencies and local agencies

are not regulating the emissions.

Why have they allowed this industry to not be covered

by the Clean Air Act?

We should make sure before you build another chicken farm,

you actually have baseline data on levels

of ammonia hydrogen sulfide VOC's particulate matter

before you build those farms.

(audience clapping)

You need to make sure you do your health impact assessment.

They need to be required to do that.

Sewage treatment plants, they emit some of the same gases

and we cover them by the Clean Air Act

but we're not covering the same gases

that are being omitted from these farms

which are industrial level emissions.

(suspenseful music)

There are many public health impacts from chicken CAFOs.

(suspenseful music)

So if you think about the facilities themselves,

you have the litter.

When you have waste and it's breaking down,

you have ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

(suspenseful music)

That stinky smell?

It's just not the stink that you're smelling.

You're smelling these compounds

that can irritate your eyes, nose or your throat,

can cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD.

It can lead to anger.

It can lead to fatigue.

(suspenseful music)

Some studies have shown that exposure to these types

of pollutants can impact immune functioning.

(suspenseful music)

These facilities, they impact the health of your community.

They basically kill communities.

Why are you bringing us a chicken farm?

What else is out there

that will bring in economic development

where we can maximize the benefits and minimize the impacts?

Why you always bringing crap stuff to our communities?

(audience clapping)

That is a form of environmental injustice.

I would dare say, that this is environment racism.

I always knew about environmental justice

but I never knew environmental justice

till I met Dr. Sacoby Wilson.

Who are the people most impacted?

Poor folks.

People of color.

If you look at a lot of the chicken farming

to a certain extent in Maryland,

and also industrial hog farm in North Carolina,

you see a disproportionate number of these facilities

in communities that are primarily low income

and primarily people of color communities.

(pensive music)

In North Carolina, you have a huge issue

with industrial animal operations.

If you think about the hog industry,

you have a lagoon system where they basically

collect the manure and liquid waste in these lagoons.

And then they spray it onto fields.

(pensive music)

Many of those folks who have been impacted,

they're black folk.

They're Latinos.

They're poor people.

Many of the same counties that produce most of the hogs,

they are also the counties that had a lot of slaves.

There's this connection between slavery

and the devaluation of people

and how we're it doing them same way,

this is environmental slavery.

(pensive music)

My grandfather that purchases this land

was my mother's father.

He was born and raised on this land.

This over here is my sister's land.

This is separate from the land over here.

And this is my nephew, he stays here.

As you can see, the spray field is right

in front of his door.

My great uncles and great aunts

and you know cousins and all that,

they all walked on this land

and that means something to me.

This land connects me with my family that I didn't know.

You see here from this angle,

you can see in there real good.

You can see the sprayers.

We've been living under the, going from that spray field,

and the smell and the stench from the hog houses

and lagoons every since 1986.

I remember vividly the first time he sprayed on us,

it was on a Saturday.

We were all sitting on the front porch here.

And he brought the gun out.

And in a short time, you heard this bursting sound.

(dramatic music)

Then all of a sudden,

the mist was coming over from the sprayer.

Where do you go in this world where people blow animal waste

on another person?

That's something I still cannot wrap my mind around.

Why would you feel like you have a right

to blow animal waste on me?

It takes your breath away.

You get a headache.

You feel like you want to throw up.

You get angry.

You get depressed.

I knew what they were doing and I knew it was wrong.

And I just wasn't going to stand for it.

We just keep trying to bring it to the attention

of those people who are in these positions

that are suppose to make decisions.

Waiting for them to do the right thing.

(pensive music)

We've been shut out.

We've just been shut out.

(pensive music)

Elsie Herring is one of 500 citizens

in eastern North Carolina

that's a part of the nuisance lawsuit against Murphy-Brown.

The lawsuit is in hopes that people can regain

some kind of monetary value for all of these losses

but if you ask me,

no amount of dollars can give you back good health.

We took 22 people from the communities up to DC

along with the lawyers and we went to Congress.

And encouraged them to do their job.

And encouraged them to come to North Carolina.

We didn't leave no doubt on their minds

when we left that room about who we are

and that we gonna say what we got to say.

We've been fighting this issue for about three decades

in North Carolina.

So it's old, it's old and long

and you see why people are tired.

Even though they say and talk a good talk,

will they walk the walk?

That remains to be seen?

We pay their taxes, we pay their salaries.

You cannot abandon this project.

(reflective music)

The hog industry in eastern North Carolina

began in the early 80's.

Then the next thing we know,

it's 10 million of these animals in North Carolina.

(pensive music)

With the majority of them being in predominantly

African American, Native American and Latina communities.

We feel like that was no mistake.

We call those the avenues of least resistance.

(pensive music)

In 1997, there was a moratorium passed in North Carolina

to prevent the proliferation of the industry.

And in 2007, there was a chance that it wouldn't be renewed.

(camera clicking)

(pensive music)

We decided, okay, we're gonna hold a 51-hour vigil

at the state capitol.

We decided to set up a mock hog farm.

And we trucked in 40 gallons of hog waste.

(camera clicking)

The facility's manager came over

and wanted to know what we were doing.

He said, if y'all spill one drop,

we gonna have to call in hazmat 'cause it's toxic waste.

We was like, toxic waste, really?

Well we thought when we loaded it on the truck,

it was organic fertilizer,

at least that's what they tell the communities.

(pensive music)

If you don't want this crap in your backyard,

why do you think we want it?

(pensive music)

We come today to say goodbye to one who held us close.

I don't think anybody in the world

could ever say that Steve Wing was a man

who visited the Earth. (laughs)

His comittment to his family,

his comittment to social justice,

his passion for his work and for the truth

that rode his life and that he rode like a horse

all of his life.

(reflective music)

Dr. Steven Wing from the University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

he was researching on this industrial agriculture

and what it could mean to people.

We took a trailer full of air pollution monitors

to 16 neighborhoods where people lived

within a mile and a half of between one

and 16 industrial hog operations.

Levels of gases and particles recorded

by the pollution monitors were related

to respiratory systems,

lung function, stress and anxiety and resident's ability

to engage in daily routine activities.

(reflective music)

The community loved him because he was so respectful

and he was humble.

And I thought about Steve would always say,

Naeema, come on, let's go make some trouble.

And I would say, okay Steve, let's go.

(group laughing)

And we were the trouble makers.

That was my buddy.

I want to get in trouble, Steve, come on, let's go.

What everybody else called trouble,

Steve and I called it justice.

So-- (group clapping)

(reflective music)

I chose to move to Fairfield, Iowa

because it was a small community but I live in town.

I wouldn't move anywhere outside of a town limit

because of the fear that a CAFO would come in

and locate close to me.

That's what we've done to the culture out here.

I helped create this thing,

that's now threatening everything

that I set out to help protect.

And that's one reason I can continue to do what I'm doing.

These corporations are turning traditional family farmers

right to farm into a corporate right to harm,

a right to pollute the air and the water

with potentially toxic chemical and biological waste.

It's time to break the corporate agriculture's grip

on rural Iowa.

(audience clapping)

The corporations are trying to divide us

because the only power greater than corporate power

is the power of the people.

The change in state and federal regulations

with respect to CAFOs is going to have to come

from people at the local level.

In Iowa and across the state lines,

local communities are standing up

and taking their future in their own hands

just like John talked about a moment ago.

In Wayne County, Iowa Select,

Iowa's largest hog corporation

proposed a 7,500 head sow operation, it's huge.

The community was outraged.

Public meetings, calls, emails, letters to the editor.

The result?

Iowa Select pulled out.

(audience clapping)

Feel your power and be powerful.

We can all do this!

Thank you.

(audience clapping)

(pensive music)

In 1995, the state legislature decided

that we had to have a one size fits all way

of regulating CAFOs in the state.

And they took away local control.

(pensive music)

After that happens, the number of CAFOs really started

to climb significantly.

(pensive music)

Today in Iowa, we have about 23 million hogs.

(pensive music)

We have about 69 million egg-laying chickens

and about three million cattle in feed lots.

(pensive music)

We have people all across the state now

really clamoring for changes.

You can get a situation like this

where you've got a home and a CAFO was built

in 174 feet away from that home.

I do a lot of community education.

Can it be the corporation that buys and provides the hogs?

You can have a CAFO built by the corporation.

So everything is like integrated within one company.

When you have a community that's educated and knowledgeable,

they're an empowered community.

If somebody is wanting to build a factory farm

that's under 500 animal units, that's 1,250 hogs,

there's no review.

There's no applications.

(pensive music)

The permitting process is only for CAFOs

that are 1,000 animal units or higher.

That's 2,500 hogs.

But we have way more CAFOs that come in

just right under that mark.

Many are sited at 2,499.

I mean that's crazy.

That's skirting the intent of the law.

I really wanna thank you all for coming out tonight.

This is an important meeting.

And it just shows that Jefferson County residents

really care about what's going on in our county right now.

There aren't too many people working on this

at the state level but one person that is,

is Senator David Johnson.

Well I went up here.

What they're really concerned about is

that this is a tourism county.

He has spent the last couple of years traveling the state

meeting with communities and it's really moved him.

The number of CAFOs here is on the rapid increase.

They have three times as many as there were 15 years ago.

This is the age of deregulation.

This is a 2,499 head, supposedly, CAFO being built

across a grass waterway.

You can build so close to another residence,

a school, a church, a cemetery.

They're spreading out.

They're trying to get these things

into all corners of the state.

We can better educate legislatures

about what the issues are.

Pigs vote and pigs give campaign contributions.

Or we can elect new people.

We need to use common sense.

And we need to find common ground.

Common sense, common ground ought to go together.

And we ought to try to do that.

(audience clapping) (pensive music)

This beautiful old farm here now

is just housing for farm workers,

immigrant labor that milks cows.

We have a cattle herd here

in Kewaunee County of 98,000 cows.

We have a human population of 22,500.

And because of that, we produce more waste here

than most major cities.

And it's not treated.

They're starting to take the corn off

so that means that once the corn comes off,

then the manure goes on.

The dairy CAFOs operate in a very different model

than what most people really understand dairy farming to be.

(pensive music)

These operators bring in the food to those cows.

(pensive music)

The manure and urine are washed down with drinking water

and pumped into a manure pit.

(pensive music)

It then is pumped into semi-tanker trucks

that then transports that out to the field.

(pensive music)

That is then dumped into a pumping station

which then pushes that manure out into the field

where it is then applied by a tractor.

(pensive music)

In an area with shallow soils and cracked bedrock,

spreading liquid animal waste on a field

is probably the worst thing that can be done.

Residents in one Kewaunee County community

say the ongoing well contamination problems there

have gotten worse.

[Reporter] The manure run off flowed directly

into her well leaving her family

without clean water for 16 days.

All the dishes were washed in pure manure.

(pensive music)

(insects chirping)

I found this is the best use for a golf bag. (laughing)

These are my stepping posts that I use

for temporarily fencing off for rotational grazing.

And I found a golf bag is the best thing to use.

So that's, it's better than actually using it

for golf clubs. (laughing)

We'll take a walk out in the field then.

We have 150 acres.

We raise 100% grass fed beef.

We've been doing this for over 20 years.

(cows bleating)

Rotational grazing is based on large rooming animals

moving through like in nature, like the buffalo.

(cows bleating)

What you can see is they move as a herd.

That's what we want them to do.

In our area, 26,000 gallons per acre

is a normal application of liquid manure.

That would equate to having 1,000 cows

standing on one acre of land,

all pooping and peeing at the exact same time.

That never happens in nature.

Our manure is directly deposited from the cows,

directly onto the pastures.

And because of that, we actually have a whole lot of insects

that actually help to cycle the manure back into the soil

and the nutrients back to the plants.

A lot of our issues are about concentration.

(cows bleating)

There has to be appropriate land base for your animals.

We've got thousands and thousands of acres of corn

that you could be putting cattle out on.

(reflective music)

Hi everyone, good evening.

My name is Jamie Raymond.

I am a health educator and community involvement specialist

with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The ATSDR,

they are kind of the health department arm of the CDC.

They've been out.

They've smelled the smells.

Environmental orders can alert us to the presence

of a chemical in the air and that chemical might be

the scent of chocolate chip cookies baking in your oven.

It might also be hydrogen sulfide or ammonia.

Orders may affect communities by being an annoyance

or a nuisance, decreasing quality of life,

diminishing sense of well-being

or raising the perception of danger.

This whole situation is very emotional

for a lot of people.

I got sores and lesions all over my body

from the filthy pollute

that they're spewing out on everybody.

When I got down here, I didn't need one of these.

Nothing has been done to protect us.

You know, I just had a question.

Have you had an opportunity to go

into any of the Hickman facilities?

No, we haven't.

We did not have that opportunity.

They declined our request.

There's many families suffering and one family benefiting

and I think that's way wrong.

The people that are most affected in my opinion

are the people that live the closest.

(pensive music)

Actually right now, we're just gonna drive

over to my house,

in Tonopah.

Life for Sonia Lopez's family is now categorized

into two ways,

before the Hickman Egg factory and after.

Their home sits just to the north of the new plant.

(pensive music)

The only thing, we were just looking for the house,

you know, a dream house for all of us.

This is the right now.

I was in love with this house.

Because it was big.

And it has a lot of room.

You know, just for the kids when they were little.

And now, I can't believe you know,

I have to abandon my house.

Thanks to Hickman.

(somber reflective music)

Those are my babies right there.

When Hickman start producing their eggs and everything,

that's when my son started getting sick a lot.

He would have high temperatures.

He lost a lot of weight.

This is all medicines for my son.

These are to see how strong his lungs are.

So he needs to blow and see.

My son was getting sick more often.

Even my daughters was getting headaches.

This is the same thing too, for my oldest girls.

Same thing.

Meds.

I went to see you know, if I was able to sell my house.

Now, it's worth less.

We owned $120,000.

And then, the value right now is 79.

So it's not even worth it you know.

What am I gonna do?

I say, guess what?

Pick up your.

Grab all your stuff and we're moving out.

(somber reflective music)

I wanted to stay here.

That was my dream.

And not move nothing.

Leave...

The room how it was when they use to live here.

(pensive music)

But I guess,

I guess it was just a dream.

(somber reflective music)

I know they got a lot of money, they don't care.

They really don't care.

And that breaks my heart because,

what about us?

What about my kids?

(somber reflective music)

You know, my message here today

is now it's up to us.

It's up to we, the people,

to come together and to hold the factory farms accountable.

(pensive music)

I see the future leadership

of our rural communities

are rising out of the people that are standing up

and resisting the CAFOs.

As a citizen, you have to be your own lobbyist,

taking the issue to your representative.

You have to give them that opportunity

to hear what's happening.

We are in Annapolis for the Healthy Community Air Act.

It's time that we have legislation that protects people

from what they're being exposed to.

We're not turning away.

We're not leaving without an answer.

We're gonna keep banging on the doors

until we get the data.

[Man] We're going to move Senate Bill 133,

Community Healthy Air Act,

Senator Madeleno, the sponsor.

We're asking for the state to do a study

looking at whether or not they have anything at risk

due to these factory farms and if there are,

then what should the farms do.

My name's Maria Payan.

My family had to finally abandon our house

and business after a decade of exposures.

I watched my husband's health issues with breathing,

heart problems and eventually cancer.

If this industry is truly being a good neighbor,

they would welcome this legislation,

they would welcome the monitoring

because they would put themselves in the position

to partner with this community.

We're gonna shift now to some opponents.

Madam Chair, Mr. Vice Chair, ladies and gentlemen,

nice to see you all again.

You have to keep the ammonia level in the houses low

for the welfare of the birds.

If they birds don't thrive, the growers don't make money.

Delmarva Poultry Industry has stated publicly

that there is no Maryland data.

So now we have a bill to get it

and now they're fighting against the bill.

This committee is gonna have to identify all pollutants

that come from these family farms.

And then identify the risk associated with them.

[Maria] The only reason that you would not

want that to come out is if you're scared of the results.

You know, I've heard about all the small family farms.

This is an industry now.

And we have chicken McMansions as I like to call them.

You know, 500,000 birds,

I can't even fathom that.

That's a different operation.

We're gonna work together with this one.

We're gonna do something about what's going on.

We just need to find out what we can do

to make a quality of life and those health results better.

(pensive music)

(faint chattering)

I'm Lynn Utesch.

Nice to meet you.

(faint talking)

Our representative repeatedly says,

that nobody here in Madison actually understands

that we have a water quality issue in Kewaunee County.

Politically speaking, people just don't wanna go against

the dairy power that is here in the state of Wisconsin.

We have these issues.

They've been going on since 2004.

There are large donations made to both political parties.

I live literally in fear if I turn on my tap,

what's going to be in it?

Will it be something like that?

The current administration is fueling these expansions.

So we need to change that.

Does Senator Tiffany know that we have water quality issues

in Kewaunee County?

The Kewaunee County is the best bad example

of what can happen to your community.

Our county has 16 CAFOs.

They're proliferating, not only in my county,

but they're coming to yours.

Unfortunately, this is happening all

over the state of Wisconsin.

I get phone calls from every corner of the state.

We're at a cross roads in Wisconsin.

Clean water.

Public health.

The right of Wisconsin citizens to be safe in their homes.

These are bipartisan issues.

Mary Dougherty, she's from Bayfield, Wisconsin.

There's a potential of 26,000 hogs moving

into a CAFO in her community.

Representative democracy is a lot of work.

And it requires frequent tending by its citizens.

We must feed it with our stories about who we are,

what we value and how we intend to protect what we value.

(reflective music)

Bayfield is a town where I live in,

it's about 400 people.

And it's made up of people who have mindfully chosen

to move here.

But I would say that our common ground is

because of the natural resources

and what Lake Superior looks like

and how beautiful it is up here.

When I came up here in 2000,

I felt like I was a puzzle piece that found its spot.

I didn't know you could fall wholeheartedly

in love with some place.

In the fall of 2014,

we learned about a hog farmer from Iowa

that wanted to open up a farrowing facility

which is basically a breeding barn.

(curious music)

In the town of Eileen which is about eight miles

from Lake Superior.

(curious music)

And in February of 2015,

the gentlemen Dale Reicks filed an application

with the county and the DRN

for a 26,000 hog factory farm in Bayfield County.

According to their DNR application,

they plan to put three large barns right on the property.

(curious music)

Bayfield has 400 people living in it.

The largest town in this region has 8,000.

To the 26,000 of anything is moving into a community?

That just got everyone's attention.

[All] No crap near Lake Superior!

[Reporter] It's the sweet sound of advocates,

fighting for a clean Lake Superior.

[All] Keep out your manure!

(pensive music)

I started looking into this.

And I realized that there is nothing

in the CAFO regulatory scheme

that was going to prevent Bayfield County

from becoming a Kewaunee County.

(pensive music) (keys tapping)

In order to take back democracy,

in order to put the CAFOs in a space

where they have to be accountable,

you have to learn the rules of the road.

You can't just come in there willy nilly saying,

I don't want a CAFO.

You have to know why.

(pensive music)

We decide, we're gonna do something.

And we started a petition to ask for a moratorium

on citing CAFOs in Bayfield County,

just to stop the clock.

(dramatic music)

The Bayfield County Board of Supervisors

passed a moratorium on livestock facility licensing

at tonight's meeting.

During that year, Bayfield County Board

set up something called

the Large Scale Livestock Study Committee.

They suggested two ordinances be passed.

[Clerk] A motion has been made to adopt the ordinance.

We recognize we can't say no to a CAFO.

But we can regulate your operations in a way

not already preempted by the state.

I had a feeling that it was gonna be passed

but you just never know until they start the roll call.

- Yes. - Senate.

- Yes. - Oswald.

- Yes. - Strand.

[Strand] Yes.

It was one yes after another.

It was a unanimous vote.

[Clerk] Motion carried.

The ordinance is--

(group clapping) (reflective music)

We did it in Bayfield County.

It's absolutely amazing because it shows you

what can be done when you show up

and you decide to commit to do the work together

to making sure your community stays strong.

And so did I grow up to be a CAFO fighter, no.

(pensive music) (soft chattering)

I'm just a woman that has kids that I want to be safe

on this place when I leave.

And I love to cook.

A lot of my life is predicated on what's for dinner.

We can go to Lake of the Clouds.

(soft chattering)

It's so good.

So it's pretty funny that I found that my love of food

and my love of family and community

has been filtered through this CAFO question.

(uplifting music)

As we see ways to benefit the state

by what we're doing up here,

that would be my greatest hope.

Wouldn't it be great if like all of senators

and assembly people have people,

email 'em and say what's your position on CAFOs?

Every couple of months, we get another phone call

that says, I got a CAFO coming in.

What are we suppose to do?

I think it's really, really important

that all rural papers are getting letters to the editor.

We started looking on the horizon to see who else

is doing this work and that's when the coalition

was born, Sustain Rural Wisconsin Network.

You know just thinking of our township,

we have the trout streams

and that is our biggest concern.

We had people from Crawford County, Grant County,

Green County, Wood County, Portage County.

We had started a petition in support of the moratorium.

We have 600 and some signatures on that.

We're calling for a moratorium in the state of Wisconsin

on new and expanding CAFO permits.

We're not calling for a ban on CAFOs.

We're calling for a common sense measured approach

to figuring out what's going on

and pressing the pause button on the continued permitting.

We're kind of on a shoestring budget in this organization.

(group laughing) And so.

- Really? - Yeah.

- We have a budget? - I don't even know.

[Member] I didn't know it was a shoestring.

(group laughing)

(pensive music)

We're here because of a struggle for our water.

Our air.

Our homes.

Our children's future.

And the quality of life in our rural communities.

When you look at some of these strategically,

you have to identify your win.

The win absolutely happens in the state houses

across this country.

We need legislative and regulatory action right now

to protect citizens from the grave consequences

posed by these factory farms.

There's nothing that will stop our coalition

and it's legion of Wisconsonites who are determined

to protect the state and their families

from the massive regulatory failure that we see

across Wisconsin.

(bell chiming) (audience clapping)

The CAFO question will only be solved

in a substantive way when we get legislative change.

(uplifting music)

The stench makes the property almost unlivable,

that is part of the argument being made in federal court.

And the cases could change how hog farms operate

in North Carolina.

(curious music)

11 federal lawsuits have been filed on behalf

of more than 500 people.

Jurors sided with residents in the first two nuisance cases

awarding $50,000,000 in one case.

(suspenseful music)

Hog farmers are rallying together in protest

of recent lawsuits that they say are threatening

to put them out of business.

Senator Thom Tillis and Congressman David Rouzer

are joining North Carolina Ad Commissioner Steve Troxler

for an emergency meeting in Raleigh.

To put the word agriculture and nuisance

in the same sentence is just ridiculous

and quite frankly, it makes me madder than hell.

Let me take this opportunity to welcome you

to the House Agriculture Committee

as we consider the 2018 Farm Act.

This bill basically makes it very clear,

when and by whom a nuisance law suit can be brought

against an AG operation.

Good afternoon.

My name is Elsie Herring.

I live in Wallace, North Carolina in Duplin County.

There's a hog operation one third of a mile from my home

and a spray field eight feet.

I have not advocated nor have I heard anyone say

we want to put a hog farmer out of business.

That is not true. (suspenseful music)

Let's try to find something

that can help the community people

as well as the farmers.

Thank you.

(pensive music)

I'm looking around the room.

I see a lot of people have taken the day off work.

At what point is this ridiculous suing

just so that some people can get some money in their pocket

and put other people out of business gonna stop?

Representative Bell, you're spot on.

And that's what this language is intended to do.

Our lawmakers, they have come out to show their support

for the pork industry.

[Brenden] And that little smell

to me is the smell of pride.

The smell of profit.

I think if this will help farmers stay in business,

it's something we ought to do.

[Elsie] They've been voted into these positions

by the citizens but they're not really

truly representing the citizens.

[Jay] When I got to visit my cousins up in Pennsylvania

on a dairy farm, I loved the smell.

So I'm gonna tell you what,

I'm listening to all this,

talk about a tempest in a teapot.

And it really is telling about

where we are in our society, folks.

(pensive music)

I don't know neither.

(faint chattering)

Come on, let's go.

I couldn't afford it.

To pay two places.

And then um,

what do I say?

Well I had to come back.

(toddler babbling)

I don't know.

I'm trying to see what can I do.

And I'm working more hours.

Can you trade, you wanna trade with her?

Justin, when we moved a week later,

he started having vomiting, missing school.

Before, it was just fever and,

but now it's like vomiting and headaches.

I took him to a doctor a couple of times.

They think it's an infection.

But actually they cannot prove it was an infection.

Okay, this is my whole family.

Sage, Justin...

They told me once, how come you don't move out?

We love this town.

I've been here more than 20 years.

My kids were raised in Tonopah.

If it's easy to them to say, move out,

we can ask them the same question.

How come you guys don't move out, too?

This is our town.

And it was really peaceful.

(pensive music)

[Clerk] We're gonna move on to the propose provisions

for Rural 320.

We are actually taking the word odor out of the rule.

We're not referring to the order.

We don't have the standards for that.

We don't think we have the authority to enforce it.

Almost 37% of all the county complaints based about odor

are filed against Hickman's.

I think the county's just tired of hearing us.

Once the rules are changed

and the permit conditions removed,

the department will not have the process

to enforce odor issues.

By dismantling the rule,

then they don't have to take any action.

You know, smell no evil, hear no evil.

I don't have to do anything. (laughing)

Note the department did not perform a study,

has not analyzed consequences of this change.

When it came to the very end,

it was like a roller coaster ride.

Did we review any other states regulations?

Are we regulating air pollutants that cause odors?

[Maria] What are we gonna replace this

to address some of the concerns

that the members in the audience have expressed?

(pensive music)

They had questions that the county couldn't answer.

And they really weren't sure how to proceed.

[Clerk] At this point, I would like to either deny

or table this for further study.

(pensive music)

They tabled it.

I count it as a win for our group.

To have the Board of Health rule in our favor

was just a great feeling.

- Mr. MacMillan? - Yeah.

- Mr. Cassano? - Yeah.

If it's not enforceable rather than gutting

and dismantling the rule.

[Clerk] Motion carried, thank you.

We really should improve the rule

so it can be enforceable.

(pensive music)

Than be used to protect our health

and our enjoyment of the property.

(pensive music)

I was actually on the other side.

I actually worked for industry.

(pensive music)

At Palo Verde, I was the plant manager

for their water reclamation facility.

And I was also their environmental manager.

I thought that some of the environmental activists

and things were maybe a little extreme.

But, it certainly has given me a different point of view.

There's our view of Saddle Mountain.

I work for organizations that really want

to do the best they could to comply

with the environmental regulations.

With the Hickman organization,

it is entirely differently.

(suspenseful music)

They started operation

without an air quality operating permit.

(suspenseful music)

The department issued a notice of violation.

But that was the end of it.

(suspenseful music)

In the Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan,

they falsified that document.

There's a date that you commence to work.

They put a date in about three months later.

Arizona Department Environmental Quality finally admitted

that yeah, it was wrong.

But they didn't take any action.

(suspenseful music)

If I were to say what I think their philosophy is.

(suspenseful music)

We'll do what's good for our business.

And we'll ask forgiveness from the regulators later.

(reflective music)

Really, it's been a personal issue.

We're at the end of life.

This is where we wanted to spend that.

And we can't enjoy it as we had dreamed.

(reflective music)

Tonopah is not going to be what it could have been.

It could have been the gateway to Maricopa County.

An egg ranch was not in that vision or that plan.

(reflective music)

A lot of people feel like that they're not affected

by what a factory farm will do.

Where we're gonna go

is evidence that everybody could be affected

no matter where they put these factory farms.

Actually, it brings it right to your kitchen table.

(rapid ambient music)

[Reporter] Don't eat romaine letter.

That urgent alert tonight

from the Centers for Disease Control comes

as if investigates a dangerous E. Coli outbreak.

(rapid ambient music)

We are driving next to an irrigation canal.

This canal was contaminated with the same strain

of E. Coli that all the people

that got sick had experienced.

And here's the feed lot.

Up hill from the canal.

They didn't find the same strain of E. Coli

on the grounds of the cattle facility.

But, there's this evidence that it's in the water adjacent.

So it probably came from this feed lot.

The feed lot as you can see is up on the hill.

This is the irrigation canal.

It runs all the way past the main part of a feed lot.

If you look out across here,

you can see all the green.

And all these fields are irrigated from this water.

The water supply is always

in jeopardy of being contaminated.

I mean, it's just is in such close proximity

to the feed lot, you can't expect any other result.

As these farms get bigger,

there's gonna be more of this.

[Reporter] The Center for Disease Control

has investigated 22 outbreaks in 2018.

Now that's more than any year from the past decade.

The ironic thing is the fields are further away

from the irrigation canal

than the feed lot that it's contaminated in.

If you think about all this that's going on,

it just spells an industry that is just out of control.

(rapid ambient music)

There's no indication that we couldn't have produced

as much meat, milk and eggs as we have today

if we had never adopted CAFOs to begin with.

(pensive music)

[Genell] Elsie, did your parents work on the farm?

- Yeah. - Okay.

[Elsie] We all did.

It was 15 of us.

[Genell] 15 of you, wow.

When I was growing up, we had a local food system.

We didn't have CAFOs.

We didn't have supermarkets.

We didn't have fast food restaurants or whatever.

My daddy never had a time period

in the 18 years that he grew contract chickens,

where he didn't have a payment that to be made.

Some kind of overhead.

When they pulled out on us,

they said, this next flock that's coming in next week,

that's your last flock.

(pensive music)

That whole transformation to the industrial agriculture

was made one consumer, one farmer at a time.

There use to be about 28,000 chickens in one barn.

And we had three barns.

[John] What we see now

is another transformation that's underway.

[Elsie] Wow, this is amazing to see this

after so many years.

But this use to be commonplace when I was growing up.

The whole sustainable model is about creating systems

that are regenerative and self-renewing.

[Genell] This is their water hole.

So this is how they stay cool.

It makes me happy

because this is the normal way for pigs to grow.

This is what hog heaven should really look like.

[Genell] Mm hmm.

These are farms that not only good places to live on,

but they're good places to live around.

These are some of our Thanksgiving turkeys.

Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble.

(turkeys gurgling)

The commonwealth of the community grows over time.

And the desirable quality of life.

Whoa!

(Genell vocalizing)

Come on up here, come on!

Come!

(cows bleating)

This is a vision,

it's the direct alternative, direct contrast to CAFOs.

And this is where we need to go.

People ask me if I'm optimistic about the change

and I tell people, I'm not necessarily optimistic,

but I'm hopeful because I know that it's possible.

[Greg] Hi John.

Because I spend a lot of time out here with people

that are actually doing it.

How you doing?

Pretty good, how's it going?

- Good to see you. - Yeah, good to see you.

How you been? - I've been fine.

- Safe travels? - Yeah.

- Yeah? - Yeah.

It's very difficult to have a sustainable agriculture

without having animals in it.

(pensive music)

We're in the back of our farm,

out in the middle of our chicken pasture.

We have about 30,000 chickens on the farm at any time.

But in Indiana,

this is not considered a confined feeding operation

because they're actually outside on vegetation.

[John] Right, so it's not a CAFO.

Somebody wanted to put a facility

to raise this same number of chickens.

The government would guarantee the loan to the banker.

There's no government guaranteed program

for us to raise chickens.

So the risk on an operation like this

is significantly higher.

Just like I bought into the idea of industrial agriculture

is good for society,

well all of our government programs still reflect

that basic attitude.

(pensive music)

We raise and market about a million pounds on this farm.

So when people tell us that you can't feed the world

without confinement animals,

I really think that we just don't value the grade material

between our ears enough.

Because it can be done.

(pensive music)

The study's that have been done

on what it would cost to have a sustainable agriculture

might be something like eight to 12%,

increasing food prices over all.

We're out here on the farrowing farm.

My family's raised pigs on pastures

for at least four generations.

And in 1998, my wife and I sold live pigs

onto the commodity market

for less than what my grandpa sold 'em for in Depression.

We had as large of a hog inventory in the United States

in 1979 as what we did in 2012.

The only difference is we had 90% less hog farmers in 2012.

If we look at what's happened to employment in rural areas

as we replaced independent family farms

with large scale CAFOs.

We're employing fewer people.

There's fewer farmers.

There's less business on main street.

We have 270 acres here

and we meaningfully employ 30 people.

We provide a really good benefit to our rural communities

and we get along with our neighbors.

If we go from this extracted exploitive model

to this regenerative resilient model,

then we can have a sustainable system

that sustains real economies and real societies

indefinitely into the future.

(pensive music)

If we had more farms doing this,

we'd get our real communities back.

(pensive music)

(keys tapping)

Part of my transformation came

after I had already changed my mind.

And it was really a very stressful time.

I kept going to the doctor

and they kept asking me, how I was doing.

And then all of a sudden,

I looked at the chart that had my heart monitor on it

and the chart just went crazy.

And that was the last thing I remembered.

(pensive music) (keys tapping)

My heart had stopped.

I woke up and I didn't even know what had happened.

You know, I figured, there must be some reason

for me still being here.

And so I have to figure out what it is. (laughing)

You know?

(cows bleating) (pensive music)

Perhaps the traditional family farm is an ideal

or a myth that never really existed.

[Lynn] Come on Nina.

Come on Georgeann.

[John] If so, no more so,

than the ideal of our American democracy.

Regardless, these are ideals we must continue

to strive to achieve.

(reflective piano music)

So I certainly appreciate the fact that folks

would like clean water.

I work in a world of rules and regulations

and allocated budgets that tell me what I can and can't do.

And under the Safe Drinking Water Act,

I don't have the authority to regulate private wells.

I have absolutely no illusions

about people in our government changing things for us

for at least five years.

We looked outside ourselves for help.

I would like to see a show of hands here

of how many people want water supplied today?

[Nancy] What was going to create change in our community

were the people who lived here.

(reflective piano music)

We are not giving up on anything.

(reflective piano music)

We have brought together the communities

that have been disenfranchised

and made them a part of the movement.

(audience clapping)

(reflective piano music)

We're fighting for our homes.

It's where we live, it's where we're raising our kids.

It's community, that's what we're fighting for.

There's a saying that you can't protect

what you don't know, what you don't love.

And I wanted to show you how we all love this place.

(reflective piano music)

It blows me away that we've come this far.

(reflective piano music)

We're here today to support and announce

a slate of bills introduced by Senator David Johnson.

At a time when the DNR Livestock Compliance Division

has been literally cut to the bone,

it's time for the legislature to act.

We just don't know what the impact

of these factory farms are on their neighbors.

Democracy, voting, it's not a part-time gig.

You beat a big money politics with a citizen politics.

[Elsie] What I'm fighting for is my birthright.

I didn't know my grandfather

but I know that he worked on this land.

(reflective piano music)

We're engaged in a long run war.

I call it the CAFOs wars.

And obviously we aren't winning every battle in that war

but we're slowly, slowly winning the war.

We're winning the CAFO war

because we're changing public opinion.

[Lynn] The grassroots is starting to wake up and realize,

democracy starts at the bottom, not at the top.

[John] You know, the only question remaining, I think,

is whether the economic rights

of the Agra business corporation

is more important and will take priority

over the basic human rights of people.

[Dan] Human rights.

Air should be the most basic human right.

[John] Let's have a nation-wide moratorium on CAFOs.

No more CAFOs. (audience clapping)

It's a broken system.

And they not willing to fix it.

And so we just gonna have to turn it upside down.

[John] We have to take a stand.

I know not where you will stand

but I will stand for as long as I'm physically able

with the power of the people

and the trust and confidence in the people

to ensure our life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

(reflective piano music)

♪ From up here I glance ♪

♪ Upon our stance ♪

♪ We could be knocked down by hand ♪

♪ But we've got a chance ♪

♪ If we can enhance ♪

♪ The number of us who will stand ♪

("Mother Nature's Daughter" by Chicago Farmer)

♪ Mama, I'm hurting these days in the dirt ♪

♪ And I'm working or always on call ♪

♪ Have you heard from sister ♪

♪ And the likes of her mister ♪

♪ She blistered from breaking her fall ♪

♪ Just like the river she'll take what they give her ♪

♪ They've been delivering her hell ♪

♪ Mother nature's daughter, they done sold and bought her ♪

♪ Ain't no more water in the well ♪

♪ They spent a lifetime breaking us down ♪

♪ Watching the tears that go back ♪

♪ I'll hug you and hold you and tell you again ♪

♪ How everything's gonna be fine ♪

♪ Mama, I'm hurting these days in the dirt ♪

♪ And I'm working or always on call ♪

♪ Have you heard from sister and the likes of her mister ♪

♪ She blistered from breaking her fall ♪

♪ Just like the river she took what they'd give her ♪

♪ They were delivering her hell ♪

♪ Mother nature's daughter, they done sold and bought her ♪

♪ Ain't no more water in the well ♪