When you are among the farmers who have made Iowa the nation’s top producer of hogs and you read that a jury has ordered Smithfield Foods to pay $473.5 million to six neighbors of its North Carolina hog operations, it’s natural to worry about those judgments happening in Iowa.

The case marked the third such ruling against Smithfield, one of the largest hog producers in the country. 

“I am hearing a lot of concern from producers,” said Eldon McAfee, attorney for the Iowa Pork Producers Association. “I think ultimately it is a threat to all of agriculture when you get these kind of judgments repeatedly.”

But because of Iowa’s legal framework and farmers’ practices here, McAfee said it is “not as likely” Iowa would have a multimillion-dollar judgment against a hog confinement.

Major farm organizations are pressuring the federal government to protect farmers against the lawsuits, noting that in some cases the farm was there before sprawl or a desire to live in a rural area led neighbors to build houses nearby. 

Iowa has nine lawsuits pending in which plaintiffs are seeking damages for declining property value or for nuisances such as foul odors from hog manure, which is stored in confinement buildings and then knifed into crop fields as fertilizer, McAfee said.

Lawsuits in the Midwest have brought mixed results, McAfee said. A Poweshiek County case in 2015 resulted in a $462,500 award to one plaintiff. But a Wapello County case a year later ended with a ruling that there was no nuisance. McAfee worked a Scott County, Ill., case in 2016 that found a confinement operation was not a nuisance to the plaintiffs. This past December, a Minnesota case involving an operation north of the Twin Cities also ended with a “no nuisance” ruling. 

The Iowa Legislature has passed legislation meant to limit damages based on the value of the property, but that doesn’t limit punitive damages, McAfee said. 

The punitive damages — meant as punishment for bad behavior — are often where juries apply big numbers, if they do at all. 

In effect, Iowa — the only state where two different laws meant to protect farmers from nuisance lawsuits have been declared unconstitutional — now has a system that relies on case-by-case and plaintiff-by-plaintiff analysis of whether regulations are constitutional. In other words, the facts of the case matter, such as how far from the confinement the plaintiff lives and whether neighbors testify that there is no nuisance, McAfee said. 

Other aspects, such as farming techniques, are in play, too. For example, North Carolina farmers often spray manure through irrigation guns on fields growing grass or alfalfa. Iowa doesn’t allow that unless the manure is diluted, and most Iowa hog farmers inject the manure into the ground. That reduces runoff odors, though they are still prevalent. 

All 50 states have some kind of “right to farm” law, and North Carolina twice has attempted to offer more protection to confinements.