Consolidation’s toll

A Storm Lake Times Pilot editorial

Iowa’s pork consolidation started in earnest about 50 years ago when swine started to move indoors. In 1976, Iowa had an estimated 60,000 hog farms producing 15 million head. Today, according to image mapping done by Environmental Working Group, the Tall Corn State produces twice as many hogs from 15,000 operations.

It has long been known that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources lost track of how many hog confinements filing manure management plans exist. The state coordinator job was eliminated. We rely on EWG, which used satellite imagery to count the number of confinements. You may or may not agree with its agenda (it promotes environmental stewardship) but it is a credible messenger that gave us the widely accessed farm subsidy database.

EWG estimates that those hogs produced 107 million tons of manure — 33 tons for every Iowan. The heaviest concentrations are in Northwest Iowa around meatpacking complexes. Of course we catch a whiff in Buena Vista County.

That is a lot more manure than we produced when family farms raised hogs as “the mortgage lifters.” As a result, we have a lot more phosphorous toxic blue-green algae in Saylorville Reservoir, from which Des Moines draws its drinking water. Iowa’s lakes and rivers reek with fertilizer excess. Our air is polluted with tiny particles of feces that give children respiratory illness.

This was not true 50 years ago. The Raccoon River was not polluted with unsafe levels of nitrate. Workers in the packing house earned decent union wages. Hog farmers could afford to pay tuition at Iowa State.

Consolidation is polluting Iowa and making it poorer.

Hogs owned by large integrators can help younger farmers get a start. They reduce risk for the farm operator. Income is steady and guaranteed by contract. The flipside is that we have almost no independent pork production. We have half the number of farms and schools. Storm Lake is bigger and far more diverse but the little towns are falling down. Iowa’s rising cancer rate should scare you.

The trend continues unabated. EWG found that the number of Iowa hogs in confinement rose 13% from 2019 to 2025. During that same period, Storm Lake found that a $100 million expansion in its water treatment capacity is necessary. Much of the cost gets thrown onto residents of The City Beautiful while most of the consumption is from meatpacking. The Dakota Aquifer cannot stand all this success.

This latest report confirms the obvious, when you look at the world from Storm Lake, Iowa. We produce more corn, soy and pork from fewer farms generating less wealth in rural Iowa. We are left with pollution, higher municipal water rates, and weaker communities where young families cannot earn a fair living. The speed of the degradation is shocking.

Iowa could have a more diverse, healthier rural economy if we demanded clean air and water. We have ceded our stake to agri-industrial interests that plunder us. This is supposed to be a government of and for the people, who are dying or dispersing from the place we love. We could change the trajectory if we choose to. Likely voters say cancer and water quality are urgent priorities. We shall see if they believe it when the midterm elections roll around in November.

TO THROW ANOTHER LOG on the fire: Net farm income dropped in half from 2022 to 2024, according to a study by the Iowa Farm Bureau and Iowa State University, and things are not getting better. There could be a downturn lasting another six years. The findings in Iowa echo national projections of depressed net farm income going forward.

Input costs are rising but corn and soy prices to farmers are listing sideways. About 20% of Iowa farms are considered vulnerable.

Just a few huge players control the nitrogen market. Three or four seed/chemical companies control what is available. Three or four meatpackers dominate pork, beef and poultry, and routinely are making settlements over wage and price fixing. The profits flow right past Iowa. It’s all about the consolidation. We have anti-trust laws but politicians are all hat and no cattle. They’re on the payroll of the consolidators. You pay a price-fixing settlement to fool people into thinking that the system is not rigged, and then you may return to fixing prices and wages.

Iowa loses farmers and fosters cancer because of consolidation forced by a tight group of agribusinesses that do just fine. It is not a conspiracy theory, the price-fixing settlements testify that the scheme is very real. We are slaves to that system although we are loathe to admit it. We prefer to dignify ourselves fancifully as free decision makers.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this editorial appeared. His latest book, Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, is available from Ice Cube Press. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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