As poultry booms in NC, large farms can reduce the value of nearby homes, study finds

Oct 31, 2024

Living near a poultry farm in North Carolina can reduce a home’s value by up to 30%, according to a Duke University study.

That finding comes as the number of birds North Carolina poultry farms raise has increased, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

At full capacity, poultry barns in North Carolina can house some 356 million birds at any given time, says the group’s recently released report.

That’s a 9% increase from 2017, the group estimates.

For years, the environmental group has used satellite imagery to help map poultry farms in the state, whose locations are kept secret from the public by state law.

Duke University researchers used the group’s maps for their study, which tracked real estate sales between 2010 and 2014 for 43 eastern North Carolina counties where growers raise most of the state’s poultry and hogs.

The Charlotte Observer and News & Observer of Raleigh used EWG data, after confirming its count, in a 2022 investigation into the secrecy cloaking North Carolina’s poultry industry.

Big Poultry showed how industrial-scaled farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs, produce billions of pounds of waste annually with little oversight.

Duke’s study, published this month in the journal Land Economics, adds to evidence that living close to industrial-scale poultry and hog barns brings a financial cost.

In a study that began in 2018, Duke researchers looked at how farms of varying sizes affected home values between 2010 and 2014, which was among the most current data available then, said Chris Timmins, a co-author of the paper who is now a University of Wisconsin’s School of Business professor.

The researchers used data from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to understand drinking water sources for each home. They used public hog farm location data from the DEQ and housing sales data from Corelogic, a company that provides information on properties nationwide.

For the paper, researchers reviewed the sales of 45,000 homes, Timmins said. Using statistical analysis, they compared the sales price of two similar homes — one near a farm and the other not.

Researchers looked at homes sold five and three kilometers away from a farm and separated those on private wells from homes on municipal water, which has national treatment standards for contaminants, Timmins said.

Homes on well water lost more value than those on community water, “suggesting that home buyers perceive this to be a possible route of exposure to pollutants,” the study by Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke’s Nicholas School of Environment and its Department of Economics found.

The values of homes on private well water located within three kilometers — or 1.8 miles — of the largest hog farms lost about half their potential sales price, the biggest drop identified.

Homes on well water and within three kilometers of a large poultry farm had a drop in value of up to 32%, the study found. Those near a poultry farm and on municipal water had a drop in value up to 30%.

“Seeing an effect of 30% is a surprisingly big number,” Timmins said. “But if you go out and visit one of these places and smell the exposure, it’s really not that surprising.”

The study does acknowledge, however, that the hog and poultry industries in North Carolina create jobs and spur economic growth.

North Carolina produces more pounds of chicken than any other state and is third in the number of hogs and pigs produced, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

About 230,000 North Carolinians lived within a half-mile of a poultry farm in 2022, the Big Poultry investigation concluded.

A single poultry barn can measure 600-feet-long and house some 40,000 birds. Barns are often built in groups of six or more and tend to be clustered in areas close to processing plants.

The farms are not required to obtain a permit or get inspected, the newspapers’ 2022 investigation revealed.

No one knows where the vast majority of waste ends up.

State Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services staff know the locations of all poultry farms but state law keeps their locations secret to the public.

“As long as the state is not tracking where these CAFOs are or what they’re doing with their waste, there’s really no way to ascertain the risk that is posed by them to people,” said EWG spokeswoman Sarah Graddy. “But we know it’s serious based on the studies that have been done.”

Some neighbors told Observer and N&O reporters that the overpowering smell of chicken waste drives them inside. Others have described hoards of flies attracted to the litter, flocks of turkey vultures waiting to feast on dead birds and frequent, disruptive truck traffic.

To some, nearby poultry houses are also a potential health threat.

Large poultry barns can emit ammonia and other potentially harmful gasses, along with dust that contains bits of manure, feed, feathers and other biological contaminants.

Living close to large poultry operations may increase the risk of contracting pneumonia, a 2018 study conducted in Pennsylvania found.

All of that can gut the value of a person’s home or make it difficult to sell, Timmins said.

Bob Ford, executive director of the North Carolina Poultry Federation, said he was unaware of the study and has not heard of neighbors having difficult times selling their homes.

But he understands that some people might not want to live next to a farm, just as some people might not want to live next to a power plant or a bar that stays open late, he said.

“It would seem to reason that a house close to something that somebody doesn’t like would be harder to sell than one that’s further away,” Ford said.

Roy Lee Lindsey, CEO of the North Carolina Pork Council, said no new hog farms have been created in North Carolina in the past 25 years, yet homes are continually being added around them.

He said the council surveyed 1,500 families that live near hog farms and “they consistently tell us that they enjoy their quality of life.”

“There are also valid reasons why people may not want to buy a house with a private well that have nothing to do with environmental concerns or nearby farms,” Lindsey said in a statement to The Observer. “We will need to review the study more closely to fully understand the methodology used to make these assumptions.”

In 2020, Smithfield Foods settled dozens of lawsuits with Eastern North Carolina neighbors to hog CAFOs after federal juries awarded $550 million (capped at $98 million by state law) in damages in five of the cases. Smithfield settled after it failed to convince an appeals court to order a retrial.

Impacts from expanded poultry farming in North Carolina affect more than eastern counties in this state.

Johnny “Van” Garris remembers a time when peach orchards dotted the land around his home in Anson County, which is southeast of Charlotte.

The fruit trees are mostly gone now, replaced by metal barns that shine in the sun and house tens of thousands of broiler chickens.

About 70 barns sit within a mile of Garris’ home, satellite images show. That includes 18 barns built on a lot last year directly behind his house.

“When I moved out here 30 years ago, I’d only see two cars a day and no barns whatsoever,” Garris said during a recent phone call. “Now, they’re everywhere.”

In early 2023, growers began adding barns directly behind his home, opposite a strand of trees. Across town, a cluster of 30 more barns sprung up mid last year

Garris has no intention of selling his home, he said, but joked that the only person who would buy it would be a poultry farmer.

Anson County has 805 poultry barns, according to the EWG’s new report. That’s topped by only three counties — Robeson, Sampson and Duplin, which leads North Carolina with more than 1,550 barns, the report said.

Graddy, the EWG’s spokesperson, said the lack of state regulations has allowed the poultry industry to grow into North Carolina’s No. 1 agricultural industry, taking in some $8.7 billion in cash receipts in 2022, according to the USDA.

In 2018, the N.C. General Assembly weakened the state’s nuisance laws and made it harder for neighbors to sue poultry farms producing odors or other noxious conditions.

And, unlike other states, North Carolina gives local governments virtually no say on where poultry farms can be built.

But it’s not the lack of regulations that has made growing chickens and turkeys so popular here, Ford said. He credited North Carolina’s abundant land and highways that link to population centers in the northeast as the main reasons for the industry’s growth.

“There are some people who think that it needs to be controlled more, that it needs a watchdog group like the DEQ,” Ford said. “We think we’re doing okay.”