Hog farming has a massive poop problem

Inside North Carolina’s search for solutions for its thousands of pig manure lagoons. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO For this third episode of our video series with Vox’s Future Perfect team, we went to North Carolina, a state that for decades has been a battleground over the public health impact of hog farming. Watch Episode 1, How 4 companies control the beef industry: https://youtu.be/3_hCLjUrK1E Watch Episode 2, The chicken industry's worker safety problem: https://youtu.be/Ia3abCiYX3w ​​Animal Charity Evaluators provided funding without editorial input for the production of this series. I interviewed two people in North Carolina who do not appear in the video: Sherri White-Williamson, who heads the Environmental Justice Community Action Network, or EJCAN, a nonprofit working toward water testing in the area, particularly of private wells. https://ejcan.org/ I also interviewed Jeff Currie, a member of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina, and a Waterkeeper Alliance worker whose job it is to test the Lumber River watershed for contamination. The Lumbee tribe is primarily located in Robeson County, one of the areas with a high concentration of hog farms that we cover in the video. https://waterkeeper.org/news/who-is-waterkeeper-jefferson-currie-ii-lumber-riverkeeper/ Another feature of North Carolina that makes it more vulnerable to water contamination is its permeable, sandy soil in areas with a high concentration of hog farms. Experts told me this area used to be swampland, and was drained to make way for agriculture. My colleague Liz Scheltens mentions a similar historical context in a video she made about Lake Erie and cow waste pollution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwhcrpJTzGQ The location of hog farms in North Carolina is related to the history of tobacco farming in the state. When the public health effects of smoking became clear, the government stopped supporting it. Many North Carolina farmers started to diversify their practices, including raising hogs. That’s exactly how Tom Butler got into raising pigs — he was once a tobacco farmer: http://archive.pov.org/brightleaves/historical-background/ Advocates and community members are also deeply concerned…