CAFO study to air

Purdue University re-searchers who conducted a detailed study of Indiana's large livestock farms will offer their findings via videoconference Thursday.

The team's two-hour discussion of their study will be broadcast at 21 county Purdue Extension offices across the state.

The closest site to Seymour is the Bartholomew County Extension Office, 1971 State St., Columbus.

"The purpose of this meeting is to provide information to enable people to be more knowledgeable about what is going on with confined animal feeding operations, since this likely will be the future of animal production in our communities," Janet Ayres, an agricultural economist and Purdue Extension land use specialist, said.

People attending the meetings will have a chance to ask questions of Ayres and her fellow study team members - agricultural economists Larry DeBoer and Roman Keeney and animal scientist Tamilee Nennich.

A series of Purdue Extension publications will be produced based on study findings and posted on Purdue's CAFO Web site, which may be reached through a hotlink that accompanies this story online at TribTown.com.

According to the school, researchers studied 50 hog and dairy farms in 2007 and 2008 in eight mostly northern and central Indiana counties with the state's largest concentrations of large livestock farms. Those counties included Benton, Cass, Huntington, Jasper, Jay, Randolph, Wabash and Wells.

Jackson County has a number of confined feeding operations for hogs and laying hens.

The Purdue study is the most comprehensive yet of Indiana's confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, the university said.
Those farms generally have 10,000 or more hogs, 125,000 or more chickens or 1,000 or more young cattle or veal calves.

Jackson County Purdue Extension Educator Richard Beckort said the meeting will not be presented at the Brownstown office because it does not have the large two-way videoconference equipment needed.

In recent years, a number of large hog farms in Jackson County, including seven under contract with Jackson-Jennings Co-op, have drawn opposition among some area residents, pointing to concerns about property values, health issues and aesthetics. The Jackson County hog farms generally house 8,000 head of pigs.

One proposed hog farm - northeast of Redding Township - has been in limbo for years because of a number of appeals associated with county and state approvals of a variety of permits in 2005.

Findings from the Purdue study provided information on the demographic characteristics of CAFO proprietors, how the operations were managed, environmental and zoning issues and financial effects of CAFOs on local governments, schools and infrastructure, Ayres said.

"We conducted hour-long interviews with swine and dairy CAFOs in those counties - 50 in all," she said. "We learned that these are very complex operations.

"We also visited courthouses and collected tax information from the auditor's, assessor's and treasurer's offices in those counties to determine the fiscal impact that CAFOs have on government budgets. In addition, we checked all the environmental violations and spills with IDEM."

The study team also looked into what local communities were doing to address CAFO-related issues.

Mike Ferree, Bartholomew County Extension educator, said anyone wanting to attend the meeting, which starts at 7 p.m., is encouraged to call his office and register.

If you go

What: Purdue University videoconference on a livestock study

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Nearest location: Bartholomew County Extension Office, 1971 State St., Columbus

Registration: Call (812) 379-1665