CAFO

Opposing sides made one final pitch Wednesday to the Whitley County Plan Commission over buffers for confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

Farmers and lakefront homeowners attended the meeting decked out, respectively, in green and blue shirts. They’ve disagreed for months on temporary buffers for confined animal feeding operations and ultimately failed to reach a compromise.

Homeowners asked the commission for a two mile buffer between CAFOs and nearby lakes; farmers wanted 1,000 feet. In the end, the commission decided on half a mile.

Purdue University researchers are releasing new findings about how Indiana counties regulate big livestock farms, in hopes of determining what rules work best to help farmers get along with their neighbors.

Paul Ebner’s team at Purdue has spent years mapping out the wide range of zoning rules counties use to regulate confined animal feeding operations – known as CFOs – and their bigger, more concentrated counterparts, called CAFOs.

Rural homeowners in Bartholomew County say a big, nearby hog farm – a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO – is hurting their property values.

The county denied their bid to lower the CAFO neighbors’ property taxes, and argued the issue is too complex to codify, while residents say officials are just worried about politics and money.

Indiana is adding more large-scale hog farms every year. They're good business for farmers, but some neighbors say they can be bad for property values.

It’s an argument people are having across the state, especially in small towns, like Hope -- population: 2,200 -- in Bartholomew County.

It's where Nancy Banta's family has lived for almost 200 years. She heads up the gravel driveway to her farmhouse, where rocking chairs on a white-washed wood porch look out over a cornfield, and a wind chime hangs over the creaky screen door.

White County is on its way to passing the state's first rule for protecting a waterway from big livestock farms. It's designed to shield the Tippecanoe River Basin and its residents from pollution and farm odors.