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A long-awaited Purdue University study of Indiana’s biggest livestock farms found they have a mixed effect on local government budgets and taxes, but critics argue the study left crucial issues unaddressed.
The university last week released preliminary results of a study on 155 confined animal feeding operations that involved megafarms in eight Indiana counties.
Three northeast Indiana counties – Huntington, Wabash and Wells – were included in the study, chosen because they have the highest number of such operations and at least two dairies in operation.
Other counties studied were Benton, Cass, Jay, Jasper and Randolph.
Cows, pigs, chickens or other livestock in a confined or concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, are raised in environmentally controlled housing in large numbers.
At the beginning of the year, 645 feeding farms operated in Indiana, six of those in Allen County, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Purdue hasn’t made its full study available to the public, although the university hopes to have it online by the end of the summer, said animal scientist Tamilee Nennich, who worked on the project with three agricultural economists: Janet Ayres, Larry DeBoer and Roman Keeney.
The researchers presented partial results in a two-hour panel last week broadcast in county extension offices statewide.
The study examined tax information from the counties involved, and team members conducted 50 hour-long interviews with swine and dairy operators.
Researchers found that some of the farms generate more tax revenue for county government than additional costs – such as wear and tear on roads under massive loads of manure, feed and animals – but some do not. Because of the taxes the farm operators pay, some farms provide relief to local taxpayers.
Purdue’s Nennich said the study, funded by the university’s College of Agriculture and Purdue Extension, has received positive reaction overall, because hard data on the economic effect of feeding farms in Indiana were lacking.
Supporters say confined animal feeding operations conserve land use and are a labor-efficient way to raise and protect animals from predators and some diseases.
But critics argue that factory farms damage local roads and can contaminate waterways when animal waste spills or is improperly applied to fields as fertilizer.
Several attempts at the state level to create buffers between residential properties and such farms have failed. But some counties – including Wabash and Wells, the Purdue study said – have updated zoning ordinances to address the issue.
Barbara Sha Cox, of the grass-roots organization Indiana CAFO Watch, said she was interested in the study for what it didn’t address.
“They did not interview the neighbors, the ones that have suffered the property devaluation and all the quality-of-life issues,” she said. “To have a comprehensive report, that should have been included.”
One of her main criticisms is the part of the study that deals with the environmental effect of feeding operations.
Using IDEM data, the researchers found that fewer than 1 percent of the farms studied had been cited for water-quality violations.
Cox said she wishes the university had done its own water- or soil-quality testing. Relying on the state to measure environmental effects, she says, does not take into account that many feeding-operations opponents and environmentalists believe the state doesn’t do enough to regulate the farms.
Nennich said the report was meant to focus on the economic effect and that it would have been too expensive to do such testing.
