Wastelands by Corban Addison
The book for June tells the inspiring story of North Carolina residents who fought for justice against the country’s largest pork producer.
Knopf, 2022, www.penguinrandomhouse.com.
The Sustainability Book Club met on June 1 to discuss Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial by Corban Addison. From the forward written by John Grisham to the final page, this book is both a real-life account and a gripping legal thriller. Addison, a novelist and attorney, details how landowners in Eastern North Carolina fought the industrial hog farms polluting their communities—and won.
Since Colonial times, hogs have been raised on small farms in our state, but economic changes and new production techniques in the 1970s and 1980s brought large-scale hog farms to the coastal plain east of Interstate 95. Known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), they house thousands of hogs in large windowless buildings. The huge amount of feces and urine produced is collected in open lagoons and then sprayed onto nearby fields as fertilizer. These outdated waste-handling practices pose hazards to those working on and living around the operations as well as nearby waterways. The neighboring landowners in Eastern North Carolina were mostly poor and Black, and their claims of harm were mostly ignored.
Starting in 2014, Salisbury-based law firm Wallace and Graham—and attorney Mona Lisa Wallace—represented the neighbors in mass-action lawsuits against multinational meatpacker Smithfield Foods, the company behind the contract farms. The suits detailed nuisance claims that ranged from hog waste being sprayed onto the neighbors’ properties to overwhelming hog waste odor to dead animals left to decay in the open. After years of court battles and multiple jury losses with monetary awards in the hundreds of millions, Smithfield eventually settled with the plaintiffs and began implementing new waste-handling technologies.
During the book club meeting, members discussed how Salisbury provides a backdrop to much of the book, yet there was almost no local news coverage of the lawsuits at the time. “The misery caused by the hog farms in Eastern North Carolina was no secret, but the lawsuit and all that went along with it was not publicized here,” said one member.
Book club members talked about how CAFOs like these hog farms started, the living conditions of the animals, and conscious meat consumption today. Many small farmers in Rowan County and surrounding areas offer sustainably raised pastured pork, and members discussed the need to support their efforts.
Pick up a copy of Wastelands to immerse yourself in this fight for justice and learn more about the environmental and health issues associated with CAFOs.
The Sustainability Book Club
Join a group of avid readers who meet monthly to engage in lively discussions focused on books about sustainability. The club meets at 6:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month on Zoom. Contact us to join!
July 6: How to Be a Conscious Eater: Making Food Choices That Are Good for You, Others, and the Planet by Sophie Egan
