No matter what North Carolina hog farmers do to improve their operations, there is always an activist group eager to attack them.
Take renewable natural gas, for example.
More and more North Carolina hog farmers are interested in covering their lagoons, capturing methane emissions, and generating renewable natural gas. The benefits are immense. Aside from the environmental benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and generating clean energy, the covered lagoons reduce odor and minimize the potential for flooding during hurricanes.
Sounds incredibly positive, right?
Food & Water Watch just posted an article — Shit Storms: Factory Farm Pollution, Hurricanes, and Climate Change — arguing that hog farms are “a driving force” behind climate change. It points to our farms as a major source of methane emissions, saying it leads to intense hurricanes that flood hog lagoons and cause water pollution.
Now, we can argue the facts around hurricanes and hog farms (read the truth of the matter here), but the reality is that renewable natural gas projects address the article’s two main points of concern: the potential flooding of lagoons from hurricanes, and the impact of methane emissions from animal agriculture on climate change.
But hold on… here comes another attack from the Sierra Club.
A recent story in Sierra magazine criticizes North Carolina hog farms for — wait for it — “ramping up efforts to convert methane from swine waste into biogas.”
The 3,500-word article — A biogas boondoggle — accuses the pork industry of using renewable natural gas projects to “greenwash” its image. In other words, these biogas projects on hog farms aren’t really environmentally friendly…
Except they are.
The EPA says that methane emissions are 28 times more potent that carbon dioxide, so there’s clearly a value in capturing these gases on farms and converting that gas into renewable energy that can be used to power homes.
If you’re concerned about climate change, this is clearly a positive development.
And the benefits to the local community — in the form of reducing odors and minimizing the potential for flooding during hurricanes — are equally valuable to the people who live near hog farms. (Learn more here about the value of renewable natural gas projects.)
No one really expects groups like the Sierra Club or Food & Water Watch to present a balanced view of these issues. But when you read these two articles back to back, it simply defies logic.
These activists plead with farms: Stop lagoons from flooding during hurricanes! Reduce methane emissions that contribute to climate change!
Then, when farmers make improvements that address those two concerns, they launch another attack.
Don’t do it that way! Renewable natural gas is bad!
There’s no winning with these folks. Which is why we’re simply going to keep our heads down and continue doing what we do best: providing Americans with safe, affordable food that’s raised responsibly and sustainably.
