Maxwell Farms' Unionport Nursery in Randolph County houses piglets that are kept for six weeks before being shipped to contract farms where they are fattened for market. / The Star Press file photo
WINCHESTER— A trial-court judge has ruled in favor of one of the nation’s largest pork producers in four nuisance lawsuits brought by neighbors of industrial hog farms in Randolph County.
The inventory of hogs and pigs in Randolph County more than tripled, from 55,443 to 177,605, between 2007 and 2012, according to the 2012 Census of Agriculture.
That sparked nuisance lawsuits against Goldsboro, N.C.-based Maxwell Foods, aka Maxwell Farms, which operates Buena Vista Sow Farm; Unionport Nursery Farm; Stone Road Farms; and Gary Foulke’s farm, all of which began production in the 2007-08 time frame.
Maxwell branched out to Indiana after North Carolina enacted a ban on construction of big hog farms because of environmental degradation, says Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.
In addition, North Carolina's livestock industry uses more corn than is produced in the state. “They said, ‘We have to get our pigs to the corn,” Hurt said. “If North Carolina wanted expansion, they were not going to be able to do it in North Carolina.”
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