Grant County

On a random drive through Grant County last month I looked over seas of wheat. Jackrabbits jumped from ditches and with a few hops vanished into the fields. The fields were also filled with signs of the oil, natural gas and helium industry.

What I didn’t recognize were the structures shown above, rows and rows of them stretched to the horizon south of Ulysses. These are the building blocks of the modern hog farm….  no, hog factory is a better term. The family farm has become a romantic memory, and much of what has replaced them is disturbing in many dimensions. The two references below should fill in the blanks. The first from a Pulitzer Prize winning series, the other links to the official corporate home page.

Seaboard Corporation: The Empire of the Pigs – by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

Seaboard Corporation Home Page