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(Undated) -- A report from Food and Water Watch says Iowa produces more factory farm waste than any other state in the country. According to the report, factory farms produce 109 billion pounds of waste each year in the state.
But Dr. Dan Andersen, Associate Professor in agriculture and bioengineering at Iowa State University, says it can be used for good.
"With manure, we've historically tried to use it as a fertilizer, and I think Iowa does a great job of that," Andersen says. "It's really that it supports farming. It supports growing corn and producing soybeans to help feed the world, feed livestock and making human edible food. But it's really thinking about the cycle of where these nutrients go and how we handle them well."
The report defines a factory farm as one that has at least 500 head of cattle, 1,000 hogs, 500,000 broiler chickens or 100,00 chickens that lay eggs. The report states that 97 million more animals are living on factory farms than five years ago. Andersen says that's a natural progression.
"Farms have been increasing in size since the 1900s," Andersen says. "I think that's the natural progression of efficiency."
Andersen says just because the farm fits the criteria, doesn't mean it isn't family-run.
"When you look at a typical swine finishing farm in Iowa, they're about 5,000 head," Andersen says. "And we're calling that a factory farm, but many of them are owned by families or a family who is working with an integrator who will supply them pigs but they own the barn."
He says focusing on that definition takes away from what's being done with the manure.
"Calling it a factory farm instead of a family farm based on size obscures what we should be talking about," Andersen says. "Is there sufficient land to use it as a fertilizer? And are farmers making the best fertilizing decisions they can with that manure?"
Andersen says there are about 10 times the hogs on feed in the state than there are humans. But, at least in relation to pigs, humans put out roughly the same amount of waste per day.
"Pigs produce about a gallon of manure per pig, per day," Andersen says. "As a rough estimate, a person produces about 100 gallons of wastewater per person, per day. So, on the scale of things, ten pigs to people and we make about 100 times more wastewater per individual so they work out about the same."
The report from Food and Water Watch states overall, livestock produces 25 times more wastewater than Iowans as a whole. Andersen says the two types of waste are handled differently.
"The properties are a lot different and how we manage them are a lot different," Andersen says.