Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America
DODGE COUNTY, INCORPORATED
"the wrenching saga of ... the rise of industrialized hog farming"
Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy; New York Times best-selling author
"This book is an absolutely urgent warning sent from America’s heartland."
Christopher Leonard, New York Times best-selling author of The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business
“A riveting tour of one family’s journey fighting the barons that control our food system.”
Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry
"a fast-paced legal thriller, filled with a few good guys and too many villains."
Sarah Vogel, author of The Farmer's Lawyer: The North Dakota Nine and the Fight to Save the Family Farm
"Her vivid writing, detailed reporting, and deep honesty brighten every page..."
Alan Guebert, columnist and author of The Land of Milk and Honey
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: A Readiness for Responsibility PART 1: The Takeover 1. Moving to the Country 2. Fertile Soil 3. The Big Pig Pyramid 4. The Meeting at Lansing Corners 5. Get Big or Get Out 6. The Battle in Ripley Township PART 2: The Lawsuit 7. The Economics of the Great Pig Explosion 8. In the Tank for Big Ag 9. Getting to Know Your Neighbors 10. Industry Watchdogs 11. Risk of Pollution PART 3: The Resistance 12. Don’t Drink the Water (or the Kool-Aid) 13. The Corporate Bully 14. In the Trenches 15. The Three-Day Stink Out PART 4: The Reclamation 16. Corporate Indoctrination 17. The Pork Board 18. Feed the World 19. On the Front Lines 20. Expanding the Corporate Empire 21. A New Vision for Farm Country
Dodge County, Incorporated
Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America
By Sonja Trom Eayrs
with Katherine Don
Dodge County, Incorporated is an engrossing legal drama that recounts the Eayrs family’s three rounds of litigation against public officials in Dodge County, Minnesota, in efforts to prevent a factory farm from going up across the road from the Eayrs’ intergenerational family farm. With the factual rigor of an attorney and the passion of a farmer’s daughter, Sonja Trom Eayrs weaves together her family’s struggles with the larger realities of corporate livestock production in the United States: the pollution, the waste, the metamorphosis of thriving, verdant countrysides into bleak commercial zones. Dodge County is the story of Sonja’s hometown, echoing with a story playing out in rural farm communities across the United States. Throughout, Trom Eayrs underscores the importance of fighting against the deliberate corporatization of rural America and the resulting political consequences, including hyper-partisanship and deepened political divides.
Dodge County is being called a “powerful manifesto” (Foreword Reviews), a “must-read for anyone wanting a behind-the-curtain understanding of why rural farm communities are struggling” (Joe Maxwell of Farm Action), and a “smart, militant update to Wes Jackson’s and Wendell Berry’s writings on smallholder farming” (Kirkus Reviews).
Dodge County in the News
Big Problems with Big Livestock Farms | Forbes
Q&A: Sonja Trom Eayrs Discusses Her New Book, Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America | Farm Action
What We're Consuming | Farm Aid
Book Review: An indignant, righteously wrathful defense of the family farm in the face of corporate voracity. | Kirkus Reviews
Book Review | Booklist
When the CAFO Industry Comes for your County: "Dodge County, Inc." exposes the brutal costs of Big Ag | Barn Raiser
Why is factory farming so DANGEROUS?
49 million...
Livestock feedlots in Minnesota produced 49 million tons of manure annually—the equivalent of the waste from 95 million people, or seventeen times Minnesota’s human population.
70%
Since the mid-1990s, 70 percent of hog farmers have gone out of
business.
$0.15
In the mid-1980s, thirty-seven cents of every dollar that Americans spent on food went back to farmers, but by 2019 that had decreased to fifteen cents of every dollar.
12,400
Ammonia emissions contribute to 12,400 deaths per year in the United States. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of these emissions.