Adair County meeting focuses on hog operation

Another community meeting tonight in Adair County will review plans for a seven-thousand-hog operation in the area. Barb Kalbach is with “Adair County Families Against Factory Farms.” She says three thousand residents in Adair and Madison counties have signed a petition, opposing the development. An agreement for hog producer Gary Weihs to buy the land makes the purchase depend on getting the state permits he’ll need for the hog lot.She says even an ethanol plant would be a better deal. Kalbach says there are plenty of farmers in the central Iowa area, and it’s the size, not the farm itself, they object to. Kalbach says a farm the size Weihs proposes can produce the same amount of manure as the city of Ames. She says her county’s not “a giant desert,” but an area where people live, drink out of wells, swim and fish in streams and visitors also come to enjoy the outdoors. Kalbach has heard concerns that the fight against a big hog confinement might harm other family farmers in Adair County. She says it’s big corporate ownership that’ll hurt family farmers, not groups that want to control the site and environmental impact. Tonight’s meeting is at Fairview Church, six miles south of the town of Stuart.