Dan Richardson, a small-scale farmer in Coon Rapids, Iowa, was not thrilled when his new neighbors moved in last year. It wasn't just the noise and the smell, it was the number--thousands and thousands of pigs. Dan had nothing against pigs; he himself raised pigs. But the people next door were part of a troubling trend to produce livestock in large facilities that confine the swine and their waste. These "hog factories" house between 3,000 and 15,000 hogs, are controlled by absentee investors, and have driven down hog prices.

Recently hog prices have nearly reached depression-era prices. Hog farmers like Dan are now getting paid 15 cents a pound, while earlier this year they were receiving 35 cents. They say that 55 cents a pound would help them make a little money and pay off their debts. At the end of September, hog prices fell 39 percent in the last 12 months, whereas pork prices at the grocery store fell only 1.5 percent. Farmers, however, are reluctant to blame middle management.

And the tide doesn't seem to be turning for hog farmers. According to Hugh Espey at the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI): "Farmers are looking at a sustained period of low prices that all goes back to the tremendous overexpansion of these factory farms. The big boys like [Murphy Farms of North Carolina] are flooding the market with hogs." In 1993, the four largest corporations controlled 45 percent of the market share, and that number continues to grow.

Earlier this year, the General Board of Global Ministries provided a $7,000 grant to the Iowa CCI to help family farmers with grassroots efforts take action on hog factories in their communities, such as by advocating in their county and state legislatures. The Iowa CCI is a nonprofit organization with 1,300 members, most of whom are farmers. Since 1981, the nation has lost half, or 250,000, of all hog producers.

Evelyn Lloyd, a member of the United Methodist Church of Coon Rapids and a neighbor of Dan Richardson's, started the first county chapter of Iowa CCI in 1995 by holding meetings in her house. The large-scale hog factory, she says, "threatens our whole environment, our economic development, our whole social structure in Iowa. It's something that needs to be addressed or we're going to lose agriculture. We're losing our family farmers. Iowa was number one in hog production many years ago. The family farmers built Iowa. If you look down Main Street, a lot of stores are boarded up. It affects our stores, our schools, our churches. Our big farms do not contribute to the community the way the family farmers do. And I hear of people who get so ill from the odors--I know it's not imagined."

The Iowa CCI also aims to protect the environment from the onslaught of manure and ammonia-based fumes which the hogs factories produce. When thousands of animals are crowded on small tracts of land, manure, usually seen as resource, becomes a liability. Hugh says, "We're talking about tens of millions of gallons of hog waste. The land can only take so much." More than 13 percent of the drinking water near swine operations in 18 states showed nitrate levels that exceed federal standards. Waterways polluted by excessive levels of nitrate can cause death in plants, wildlife, and even infants.

"With family farms, the hogs were disbursed over larger areas. [In hog factories] you have fewer people producing more hogs," says Hugh. The Iowa CCI would rather see more people producing fewer hogs.

Another issue the Iowa CCI contends with is the policy of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), an organization that is supposed to promote pork through education and research. The NPPC receives much of its operating expense from a producer checkoff, based on hog production. The Iowa CCI sees the checkoff as a mandatory tax that results in overexpansion. "We feel they're using the mandatory checkoff to promote industrialization of farms," Hugh explains. "That hurts independent producers. And farmers have to pay that--they're putting money into an organization that's going against their interest."

One solution the Iowa CCI supports is using the tools of democracy to sustain farm communities. "Let local people decide," Hugh says. "What kind of development do you want to see in your community?" In the election held earlier this month, residents of South Dakota and Colorado voted for greater restrictions on hog factories in their communities.

"United Methodist conferences have taken a stand," Evelyn says. "Something more has to be done. We're losing the rural communities. That's not the way I envision Iowa. We have to contact the legislators, we have to continue pushing for all people, not just a few. What the big farms are doing seems almost unconstitutional."

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