Here’s yet another reason to support your small, local farm: large farms have a serious problem with manure. They stink, literally. They also stink for the environment, and the people living near them.
Today’s Washington Post had a great article explaining the many issues with disposing of animal waste from factory farms. If you don’t know much about it, it’s a fascinating and disgusting topic.
On a small farm, one that runs the “old-fashioned way,” things function in a more-or-less closed system. You feed the animals. The animals poop, and you use their manure to fertilize the crops. The crops grow, and you use some of the crops to feed the animals. Sure, you probably supplement their feed with some food from outside, and supplement the fertilizer, too, but most of the waste gets used. It’s a nice, neat cycle. Sustainable, even.
On a large farm, it’s a different story. When you pack thousands of animals into a tiny space, they generate a whole lot of waste, and there just isn’t enough nearby farmland around to absorb it all. Some fraction of it gets used as fertilizer, but some dries out and becomes an airborne pollutant, and some seeps down into our waterways. This is bad news for people who breathe air, and bad news for our major lakes and bays – not the least because all the extra nutrients in the water are causing huge algae blooms, which lead to large dead zones where plants and fish can’t live. This is happening all over the world, notably in the Gulf of Mexico and our own Chesapeake Bay. And it’s truly frightening.
The Post article goes into the process in more journalistic, unbiased detail than I could hope to. But manure pollution is just one of a dozen good reasons to avoid factory farms. If this troubles you like it troubles me, the best way to protest factory farms is to buy all your meat, eggs, and dairy from small, local farms.