North Carolina’s poultry industry is booming—and its water is paying the price.
A new analysis by the Environmental Working Group reveals the scale of the crisis: over 421 million chickens and turkeys were housed in the state in 2024, generating 3.6 million tons of manure annually. That’s roughly 37 birds for every resident. And the numbers are growing, not shrinking.
This manure—applied to nearby farm fields by contract growers working for massive integrators—contaminates groundwater and streams with nitrogen, phosphorus, and pathogens. The result: drinking water threats and public health risks that disproportionately hit rural communities with no other water sources.
The machine driving this crisis is consolidation. A handful of corporations—Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, Sanderson Farms—control the vast majority of NC poultry production through a contract-growing model that leaves individual farmers bearing environmental and financial risk while corporations pocket the margins. Growers are required to build and maintain facilities to corporate spec, then sign away liability for the manure their birds produce.
EWG is calling for stricter oversight and enforcement—requirements that integrators, not contract growers, take financial and environmental responsibility for waste management. Without it, North Carolina’s water will continue to shoulder the cost of corporate agriculture’s consolidation play.
This is the tax on extraction. Someone has to pay for scale. Right now, it’s the people whose wells are turning brown.
What to watch: The state legislature’s response to EWG’s findings. Will they strengthen CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) regulations, or let the integrators write the rules.
Related reading: the consolidation pattern shows up in beef processing, in small-processor support efforts, and in the climate costs of livestock heat stress. And if you want a contrast—regenerative approaches that build soil and protect water—see bees and farming.
