Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
times the amount of waste that is produced by all humans in the
United States, according to EPA estimates.
On traditional, diversified farms—the ones we imagine with red
barns and animals pecking and foraging in the grass—farmers
make good use of manure, recycling nutrients to replenish the soil
and fertilize crops. They balance the number of animals with the
land's ability to absorb the nutrients in their manure. In contrast,
factory farms intensively confine too many animals who produce
too much waste for the neighboring land to utilize.
Farmed animal waste management problems have gotten even
more dire over the past two decades, and the USDA's Natural Re-
sources Conservation Service and the EPA have identified the fol-
lowing key reasons:
• the move toward intensive coninement;
• the steady replacement of small- and medium-sized operations
with large confinement operations;
• the continued consolidation of all aspects of production;
• the increase in numbers of conined animals per operation; and
• the spatial concentration of operations in high-production areas.
Simply put, the shift from farms to factories is to blame.
Not surprisingly, water quality concerns are most pronounced in
areas of intensive crop cultivation (often for farmed animal feed)
and concentrated farmed animal production. Overapplication of
manure to land, leaking or overflowing manure cesspools (euphe-
mistically referred to as “lagoons”), and the redepositing of air-
borne pollutants into waterways have contaminated surface and
groundwater with factory farm waste.
The incidences of water pollution are many and occur from coast
