EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

Journalism can be challenging. Last year, reporter Edward Field climbed into an open-air, two-seater airplane to get a better look at some of the huge hog farms going up in Wright County, Iowa.

"We buzzed one of the big operations," he says. "There I was, 2,000 feet up. We were flying over manure lagoons. [The pilot] kept saying, 'Look down there.' All I could think about was my notebook."

In fact, large commercial hog operations have set up shop in several states, including Illinois. The debate over regulating them got underway this spring at the Statehouse. In his story on the politics and economics of pork production for this month's Illinois Issues, Field, who writes for an international business publication, compares policy changes implemented in several states to the proposals under discussion in Springfield. Along the way, he shares some insights he gathered during his visit to Iowa.

Field says dozens of the facilities are going up in Wright County alone. "The landscape," he says, "is peppered with them." As a result, Iowa recently approved a law that regulates air and water quality near the farms, something Illinois lawmakers are debating. But Iowa could prefigure our future in other, more fundamental ways.

Besides the aerial view, Field got an "olfactory tour" in a pickup. His guide was a local farmer who could sniff out the difference between nurseries and feeder farms, a nuance Field never quite mastered. Still, while he says smell is a motivating factor behind opposition to the large farms, the real issue is the survival of the smaller operations. "These people raise hogs. They have hog pens outside the house. They're used to the smell," he says.

"It's the ancient story of agriculture. Being busted out by the big guys. We shouldn't overlook that there's an economic battle going on here." The shift, he says, stems from new technologies for raising hogs and structural changes in production. It has happened in the poultry industry. "It is one of the economic realities," he says. "Fifty years ago, everyone had chickens. I'm not going to say the hog industry will end up that way. The cattle industry didn't. But the chicken industry highlights the potential." Iowa used to be the top egg producer. Then the industry became huge and moved to California and the South. Now, Iowa is no longer the top egg producer, and there was nothing lowans could do about it. And there is little the states can do about such shifts in the hog industry.

"The best you can hope for is to mitigate some of the problems," Field says. "You don't want it to pollute the water supply or leave huge scars."

Pig manure is stored in water lagoons, then sprayed onto open acreage. Field says he went up in the two-seater to see how it drains off after it's applied. "I saw light brown color coming into the streams," he says, stressing that's a violation he saw only once.

For some of us, though, once just might be enough.

4 ¦ April 1996 Illinois Issues