My latest: Has the pork industry gone green?

Dear friends,

Four years ago, the world’s largest pork processor settled a lawsuit with more than 500 North Carolinians. The plaintiffs, who live near industrial hog farms, said the stench and flies had made their lives unbearable.

Today, the pork industry calls itself “a good steward of the environment” because it captures methane from hog waste and converts it to biogas.

Has the industry gone green? Has life improved on North Carolina’s coastal plain? To find out, I visited hog country four times. I sat in churches, living rooms, and shotgun in a Cessna Skylane. Here’s the article I wrote for Sierra magazine and the Food & Environment Reporting Network:

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2024-2-summer/feature/cafo-hog-industry-great-biogas-boondoggle

The article also features photos by J. Henry Fair, who is best known for his aerial photos of what he calls industrial scars.

I hope you’ll read the story and share it widely.

Plus, five articles and a book I’m reading:

1. After the historic 1953 ascent of Mount Everett's summit, a courier named Ten Tsewang Sherpa ran 200 miles to Kathmandu to deliver the news. He died a few weeks later. Peter Frick-Wright retraced Ten Tsewang's steps, accompanied by the courier's grandson, and told his story for the first time in Outside magazine.

2. This year Cecilia Ballí was the grand marshal of the children’s parade at Charro Days, a celebration of Mexican culture in Brownsville, Texas. She wrote about the festival as a reminder of the beauty of border culture. Published in The New York Times with photos by Thalía Gochez.

3. Brendan Koerner went undercover as an OnlyFans chatter, joining a global boiler room that separates unsuspecting customers from their money. Published in Wired.

4. “The Marked Man” is one of the most powerful wrongful conviction stories I’ve ever read. It was written by Christopher Spata and Dan Sullivan and published in the Tampa Bay Times.

5. Audra D. S. Burch takes us to Section 14, a former Black and Mexican-American neighborhood in Palm Springs, California whose residents—gardeners, construction workers, and housekeepers—were burned out of their homes in the 1960s to make way for commercial development. It’s a complex story, published in The New York Times with photos by Carlos Jaramillo.

6. Finally, J.T. Blatty’s book Snapshots Sent Home. After serving as a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan and Iraq, Blatty returned to a conflict zone—this time Ukraine, as a photographer and oral historian. There, she found herself pulled into a world of volunteer fighters. She bonded with them during long nights of drinking, musicmaking, and shared grief, and then wrote a memoir connecting her wartime experiences.

 What I’m watching:

The documentary Monument chronicles filmmaker Michael Turner’s visit to a Holocaust memorial created by his grandmother Lici, a Hungarian Jew whose parents and sister were killed in Auschwitz. You can watch it on demand for $5.99 at Vimeo.

And what I’m listening to:

1. I’m a sucker for music videos that explode with celebration, like this one by Els Catarres. Their song, “Cor” (“Heart”) is in Catalan, but the captions are in English: “I believe in heart, giving it my all, and would rather burn out than slowly fade away.”

2. One of my favorite recent documentaries was Dusty & Stones, about two cousins from Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) who play American county music. What a treat to see them make their Grand Ole Opry debut last fall with the song “The River.” 

Enjoy your summer. Stay hydrated.

All best,
Barry Yeoman