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Jason Yu
Professor Wood
WR 39C
January 20, 2022
Hog Farming in North Carolina and Climate Change
    Over the past couple of decades, North Carolina has risen to become one of the biggest hog producers in the United States. However, in a paper written by Owen Furuseth, a professor at the University of North Carolina, research into the number of hogs individual farmers grow shows that in 1982, “58% of producers” in North Carolina had “less than 25 hogs”.(Furuseth) In the next decade, the number of hog producers in North Carolina “declined by as much as 62%”, however, the number of hogs being farmed increased over twofold.(Furuseth) How did North Carolina increase their hog production while having a lower number of farmers? The answer to this question is through a farming technique known as industrialized farming. This is a technique that  
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encloses a large amount of livestock into small areas and feeds them low-quality food until they are big enough to be killed for their meat. In essence, this technique tries to be as efficient as possible when farming livestock. However, this efficiency shows its cost in the form of climate change, environmental damages, and are an inconvenience to the communities nearby.
    Historically, the hogs in North Carolina were grown by farmers and “was largely a casual, supplemental activity”.(Furuseth) These hogs were typically pasture-fed and raised until they were heavy enough to be slaughtered. Because the demand for pork was not very high, this was a stable way for North Carolina to produce pork meat, and the need for industrial corporate farming, which made up for .1% of the hogs produced, was not needed during 1950-1980. In 1986, there was a shift of popularity from red to white meat, which derived from an awareness of healthier options, and while pork is classified as a red meat, it was still marketed as white meat. This caused the huge demand for pork that North Carolina’s pork infrastructure could not accommodate and they eventually turned to industrial farming.  
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So what makes industrial farming so bad? A big part of this is the waste that the animals make. In traditional farming, the number of animals being contained is a lot lower and makes cleaning up after the animals easy. Usually, this waste would be spread over the crops as a form of fertilizer. However, in industrial farming, there are significantly more animals and the old conventional method of cleaning animal waste no longer works because there is so much. Their solution to this problem was filling up big pool-like structures commonly referred to as “waste lagoons” with hog sewage water and using this water to spray their crops. When too much waste is applied to crops or waste lagoons are filled too full, there can be consequences such as greenhouse gas emissions and water contamination. 
Industrial hog farming comes with different consequences to the climate. One factor is storing the manure in the waste lagoons. Through several processes enabled by bacteria build-up, methane gas, which “has an effect on global warming 28 times higher than carbon dioxide”, is released from these lagoons.(Grossi)  
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According to a paper written by Giampiero Grossi, who has a PHD in plant and animal science, “long storage periods and warm and wet conditions can further increase these emissions” further increasing the amount of methane released depending on how the waste lagoons are handled.(Grossi) When solid waste is spread into the soil as a fertilizer, it increases the amount of nitrous oxide released into the air, which “is a molecule with a global warming potential 265 times higher than carbon dioxide”.(Grossi) Another way greenhouse gasses are emitted is through a process called enteric fermentation. In this process, the animal’s digestive system breaks down the food into fatty acids that are passed into the liver. When this process is finished, carbon dioxide and methane are released into the air. In total, these processes can account for at least 49% of the emissions by the entire sector.
    (Could add in paragraph on the effects it has on people and community)
    Although hog farming has benefits through its efficient methods of growing hogs, there are also environmental downsides that come with it. This is shown through the near impossible task of managing all the waste produced by the animals, which then releases greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. In addition, North Carolina is in an area that experiences on average two one hurricane every 3.25 years, which can cause severe flooding and leakage of waste lagoons. This can cause damage to the environment and lead to even more greenhouse gas emissions down the line. Also, natural processes such as enteric fermentation cause an increase in carbon dioxide and methane emissions. Through proper management of waste lagoons and higher quality 

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food, the greenhouse gas emissions caused by industrialized farming can be mitigated as we approach this critical time in earth’s history.

Another source i might use later
https://www.iatp.org/blog/hogwash-and-its-aftermath

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Works Cited
Furuseth, Owen J. “Restructuring of Hog Farming in North Carolina: Explosion and Implosion.” Wiley Online Library, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 5 Nov. 2004, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/0033-0124.00086. 
Grossi, Giampiero, et al. “Livestock and Climate Change: Impact of Livestock on Climate and Mitigation Strategies.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 12 Nov. 2018, https://academic.oup.com/af/article/9/1/69/5173494?login=true#198779969.