While researching for my topic of environmental effects of industrial agriculture I was able to stumble across this article which illustrated some of the environmental problems with CAFOs. This article was published by Wendee Nicole, a author for The Scientific American and other magazines, who went to North Carolina herself and interviewed the residents who both worked and live near the feeding operations. To many people, they don't think living near a feeding operation would have had a huge impact on someone's life. However, that is not the case Nicole found out that many of the residents that lived close to a neighboring operation suffered from minor to severe lung respiration related issues due to the amount of dust and air pollution that these plants make. Besides from air pollution CAFOs can also affect both land and bodies of water. Due to the massive amount of animals most of the manure from these facilities are stored in manure lagoons and over time this massive amount of animal dung can become very toxic. Sometimes these lagoons can leak and infect the groundwater supply, kill life, and can cause algal bloom in water. The author suggests that possible ways to mitigate the effects of CAFOs is to filter the animal waste as we do human waste and practice semi sustainable farming techniques. So tell me what do you agree with these possible solutions? If not what other ways could we solve this problem?
This article that you have found gives plenty of information on your topic. This will be a great source to use for your research topic, and I must add that your research topic is interesting and highly controversial. To answer your question, I believe that the author has the right idea to filter the toxic excrement from the CAFO's. It will help clean the air for the residents living around the area, and it will surely help clean up the surrounding areas. The semi-sustainable farming technique is also another astounding resolution for this problem. If it cannot be fully sustainable at least it can help reduce the amount of waste the CAFO's produces.
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