Giving Compass' Take:

• The GOP-controlled Congress along with the Trump administration have recently exempted big livestock farms from reporting their air emissions. Not only is this putting neighboring communities and people's health at risk, environmental advocates are also warning that the failure to monitor these emissions makes it more difficult to assess the effects of large-scale agriculture on our climate. 

• How can donors help protect the safety and well being of people living near livestock farms? 

• Learn about ways the federal government is trying to monitor the livestock system. 

Rosemary Partridge has lived in Sac County, Iowa, for 40 years. She has watched the state’s agricultural landscape change, with large-scale hog farms taking over nearly all the land surrounding her home. The stink of the neighboring farms is “unbearable,” making her nauseous whenever she is outside. She and her husband, once cattle and crop farmers who now plant their land with native grasses, suffer health problems—including her husband’s chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—that they worry are a result of the pollution their neighbors are pumping into the air.

People who live near large livestock operations have reason to worry that their health is at risk.

Eleven hundred miles to the east, Lisa Inzerillo wonders how much longer she and her husband can tolerate living across the street from six chicken barns, one of the many concentrated animal farming operations (CAFOs) that make the area the poultry production epicenter of Maryland’s Delmarva peninsula. She says she suffers chronic allergies and her husband has had several bouts of bronchitis since the chicken farm moved in about three years ago. “At night, you see the dust from these fans,” she says. “That’s fecal matter, that’s feathers, god knows what else. And if you’re seeing it, you’re breathing it.”

Read the full article on livestock farm air emissions by Leah Douglas at The New Food Economy.