CAFOs wreck domestic rural communities
- The consolidation and intensification of farms
- CAFOS reduce employment and provide low quality jobs
- Contract farming
- CAFOs injure and sicken their workers
- Environmental damage caused by factory farms
- Mixed evidence that nearby CAFOs make people sicker
How they destroy communities
- They do not create good jobs for the local community. They pay so little that they are highly dependent on migrant workers, see Vermont's Latinx dairy workers
- A 2022 report from the US immigration council finds that 1/5th of livestock farm workers are foreign born, but 45% of meat packing workers are[1]This is likely higher when only considering CAFOs.
- CAFO farmers may be local people, and so may genuinely care about their local communities where they are raised. Nonetheless they may be prevented from servicing their communities because of restrictive contracts with meat producers
- This piece describes how many in the rural UK hate poultry CAFOs
- Proximity to CAFOs and house prices
- A review of 51 studies of rural community wellbeing from the 1930s to 2007 found that 29 of them (57%) found largely negative impacts, 25% found some negative impacts and 18% found no detriment, with almost no studies finding positive effects. These negatives included:
- Lower family incomes, declining middle class, and higher poverty compared to communities with more family farms
- Higher pressure on govenrnment services leading to poorer quality schools, public services, and declining local businesses
- Deterioration of community social fabric, with lower civic participation, and fewer churches and community organisations.
CAFOs extract profits from rural communities and do not reinvest
- The profits produced by CAFOs are usually not felt by the communities that house them; they flow to far-flung corporate headquarters.
- Food and Water Watch, 2022 find that whilst efficiency gains have greatly reduces the cost of pork production, as much as half of these gains have been absorbed by pork integrators
- CAFOs typically do not generate as much economic activity in their communities. Whilst a local farmer might have machinery fixed by local mechanics, get feed from local suppliers, and employ local veterinarians, CAFOs are often highly vertically integrated, meaning they use their own suppliers and employees.
- By diverting resources from local communities, any job increases from CAFOs are offset by the decline in jobs and wages that the local area suffers as a result of decreased business from animal agriculture. Pew Commission, 2008
- The proliferation of pig CAFOs is associated with economic decline (Pew Commission, 2008)