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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Hog smell study.

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Hog smell study.
  • Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 01:10:41 -0700 (PDT)

I think there's some of the city vision of the country in it, and probably too many hogs per acre too. I grew up around hog farms myself, and until they started packing them in we never noticed much of a smell. I spent a few days on a farm last week with a few of everything which was covered by well managed compost and there was no scent at all. Perhaps only 5 or 6 hogs to an acre, but the dogs smelled more than the hogs, and they only smelled when they got wet.  I don't think spraying ozone will eliminate health concerns, but I can expect if there's an ozone spray lobby somewhere it will be high on the list of recommendeds.



--- On Fri, 3/6/09, Don Bowen <don.bowen@earthlink.net> wrote:
From: Don Bowen <don.bowen@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Hog smell study.
To: "'Healthy soil and sustainable growing'" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Friday, March 6, 2009, 11:11 AM

> >Its funny I've never found hog manure or hogs smelled on a well
managed
> >farm. Of course any small farmer who makes good use of the manure can
> tell
> >you this, or the federal government can spend 100's of millions
trying to
> >think up goofy ways to make industrial farming smell like normal
farms. I
> >bet we can all guess where the federal government will head here.

I grew up on a farm and raised hogs as a 4H project. I also worked on a
neighbors brood operation. I can tell you that there ways to reduce the
stink but not completely eliminate it. My brother is working on some dry
litter projects using Coconut husks but that is less for odor control than
to reduce contaminated water runoff on small Pacific islands.

But this is an age of selfishness. People want cheap industrialized food
but do not want to see, smell, or hear anything about the process. A prime
example is a dairy farm near where I used to live. It had been there since
sometime in the early 50s but by the 90s nearby orchards had been sold and
turned into a golf course and very expensive mcmansion trophy houses. The
people complained about spraying the liquid waste on nearby fields, never
mind there was no smell, they just did not like the sight of spraying brown
water. It offended their vision of what living in the country was. Their
vision formed by countless TV commercials of black and white cows munching
in green fields near a red barn could not be reconciled by reality so they
did what selfish people often do, they called up lawyer friends. The dairy
had to defend itself but was forced out of business.

Don Bowen KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html

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