Farm Issues

Few people know the pig business like North Carolina’s Don Webb.

Webb raised pigs in Wilson County, North Carolina, until, in the late 70s, residents told him the smell near his farms was unbearable. He tried some solutions. They didn’t work.

“I was riding down the road and got to thinking of my own mother and father and what would I do if one of these was their homes [near the pig farms],” Webb said in his heavy Southern drawl. “So I got out of the business.”

So just how serious is the impact of industrial farming? Worse than you could ever imagine, writes organic farmer Julian Rose in this review of 'Farmageddon - the Real Price of Cheap Food', which lifts the lid on the industry's human and ecological devastation, and the systematic cruelty inflicted on the animals that feed us.

Whatever happened that led a great part of humankind to give the animal kingdom such a lowly status in the overall evolutionary pattern of life on Earth?

How is it that we have subjected millions and millions of our animal cousins to concentration camp

Trends are always fun to follow. Even if you're not into the latest and greatest, it's interesting to see how our culture evolves year after year. Whether it's fashion, cars, entertainment, technology or whatever else you're into, opinions and tastes come and go.

For 2015, there are several trends hitting the market that we may not have seen coming even a year ago. From larger smartphone screens to tinier houses, trends tell a tale of taste cycles and niche fulfillment that is often hard to predict.

In this article, I wanted to take a look at five of my own

At a remote research center on the Nebraska plains, scientists are using surgery and breeding techniques to re-engineer the farm animal to fit the needs of the 21st-century meat industry. The potential benefits are huge: animals that produce more offspring, yield more meat and cost less to raise.

There are, however, some complications.

Pigs are having many more piglets — up to 14, instead of the usual eight — but hundreds of those newborns, too frail or crowded to move, are being crushed each year when their mothers roll over. Cows, which normally bear one calf at a time,