Reynolds has argued that the state also offered testing to dozens of other businesses. But businesses like his are increasingly the norm in farm country: huge, regional-scale corporations owned by just one or a few families who, many believe, use their political connections to overpower both local democracy and local businesses. The story of Hansen and how he came to wield so much power reveals how decades of deregulation shaped the hog industry — and by extension, the farming methods used to produce the vast majority of the pork that America eats.
Iowa Select Farms denied multiple requests for interviews and visits over a period of five months. Jeff Hansen and his wife, Deb, grew up in Iowa Falls as typical farm kids. They graduated from the local high school in , and soon married.
Both went straight to work: Jeff helped his father farm, while Deb worked in a local farm insurance office. Farmers grew corn and soybeans, but many also raised a flock of chickens, milked a small dairy herd, or grazed beef on pasture.
Farmers raised a variety of breeds in barns and in pens. As the herd grew, the couple found the work grueling — particularly Deb, who had quit her office job to manage the pigs. Quickly grasping the potential of mechanized livestock equipment, Hansen sought a loan to build a business around these automated systems. CAFOs allow operators to farrow thousands of pigs in one barn, a model that depends on liberal use of antibiotics to prevent diseases that thrive in crowded conditions.
After weaning, the pigs are transferred to a finishing operation. Their next transfer is their last — to the slaughterhouse. These two trips in a packed semi are the only daylight the pigs will ever see. In the sheds, powerful exhaust fans constantly suck out the ammonia rising from the manure lagoons.
Shut off the fans and hogs would die within hours , cut off from ventilation and left to overheat and ultimately suffocate, as whistleblowers say they did last year when the pandemic disrupted slaughterhouse operations and Iowa Select needed to quickly kill hundreds of thousands of animals.
While Hansen continued expanding his CAFO business, farm economists signaled that if Iowa were friendly to corporations that wanted to expand hog CAFOs, the growth potential was enormous: Trade agreements that cut tariffs and import restrictions in Asia and Mexico had swung open the world market for livestock products — particularly eggs and pork.
CAFOs were also attractive because the big meatpackers, which purchased, slaughtered, and packaged pork, were now offering contracts with locked-in prices.
For meatpackers, buying from CAFOs was vastly more profitable than buying from a patchwork of independent growers, who sold pigs of varying breeds and sizes at local auctions. CAFOs provided a steady stream of pigs in predictable sizes that were ready for slaughter on an exacting schedule.
The region also has abundant groundwater hogs are thirsty. After steadily expanding his CAFO-building business, Hansen decided, in , that he could also make money with his own hogs.
He incorporated a new company, Iowa Select Farms, signed a contract with a meatpacker, and started with a herd of 10, sows. In its first four years, Iowa Select more than quintupled its herd to 62, , enough to crack the top 10 largest pork producers in the country.
By , Iowa Select, with 96, sows , was selling 1. Today, two-thirds of Iowa hogs are grown on contract with big meatpackers. Iowa Select Farms is now the fourth-largest hog producer in the country, and owns about 15 percent of the pork production in Iowa. Its sow herd is , , and growing. As confinement buildings and their manure ponds spread rapidly across the Iowa countryside through the late s, a passionate rural backlash emerged, sparking a prolonged battle over the future of farming in Iowa.
Protesters packed gymnasiums and crowded hallways in the statehouse. Coalitions held rallies — one drew 1, supporters to a town of 2, — and lobbied legislators to enact a state moratorium on new confinement construction, or at least give counties the option to deny the necessary building permits. Pushback came from all directions. Right-wing commentator Pat Buchanan even made his opposition to confinements a key part of his presidential campaign in Iowa. Bob Dole — elevated him from protest candidate to legitimate contender.
Iowa Select and industry leaders knew these movements could defeat them. National newspapers frequently covered the story. Scientists also began to document negative health effects among people who lived near confinements. One study of North Carolina residents who lived within a few miles of clustered confinements found that they had lower life expectancy and higher rates of infant deaths, asthma, kidney disease, tuberculosis, and blood poisoning than those who lived further away.
Dangerous levels of ammonia , which causes burning in the eyes and respiratory tract as well as chronic lung disease, have been measured near massive hog sites in Iowa since the early s. Communities near hog operations also report higher rates of headaches, sore throats, runny noses, coughs, and diarrhea than comparable areas without hog confinements.
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