Listen to episode 4 below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Amazon Music.
Anthony Stateler’s farmhouse sits beside a vast expanse of golden wheat. The field shimmers under a late-summer sun, stalks swaying in a coordinated ripple. The soil and livestock-scented air, singed by the midmorning heat, blankets us as we exit the car.
Stateler Family Farms is a thousand-acre soybean, corn, wheat and hog farm in McComb, Ohio that’s been in the family for generations. With over 7,000 pigs, Stateler’s farm is classified as a CAFO, or a concentrated animal feeding operation. You may have heard the term before, and if you have, it’s likely been in a pretty negative light. While there certainly are CAFOs that do mistreat their animals and pollute the surrounding land and water, Stateler says his farm is not one of them.
So, what exactly is Stateler’s story? Why is he so eager to tell it? And what’s keeping the rest of the region’s hog farmers from being just as transparent?
Learn more about CAFOs the state of hog farms in the U.S. by exploring the data visuals below.
Home to nearly 4,000 CAFOs, Iowa has more large-scale livestock operations than any other state. While many other top states for the number of CAFOs are from the Midwest, concentrations of CAFOs are also found across other regions of the U.S.
In 2002, large-scale hog operations — farms with 5,000 hogs or more — accounted for just over half of the U.S. hog inventory. By 2022, that share grew to 75%. Meanwhile, small-scale operations — those with under 2,000 hogs decreased from 25% of the U.S. hog inventory to just 5%.
Demand for pork — both at home and abroad — has grown steadily since the late 1990s and shows no signs of slowing down, with projections pointing towards consumption increasing to 25 million pounds by 2035. Exported pork has increased from under one million pounds in 1998 to over seven million pounds today.
As someone in his mid-40s, Stateler called himself a “minority” in an industry where the fastest growing sector of the workforce is 65 years and older. This age demographic among farmers saw a 12% increase between 2017-2022, while the 35-64 age group decreased by 9%.
