Wastelands. Corbin Addison. 2022. 357 pages.

This is the first nonfiction book by the Virginian novelist, attorney, and activist, the true controversy surrounding factory farming in the agricultural eastern plains of North Carolina.

The central issue is the harm done to the neighbouring farmers and their families, mostly Black, by the stench of hog waste drifting far and wide from the barns, the trucks carrying dead hogs, and the spraying of hog waste far onto neighbour’s property, and even on to their houses, and contaminating water sources and wildlife, as well as inflicting cruelty to the pigs. In 2020, after losing four multi-plaintiff cases and well over half a billion dollars in compensatory and punitive damages and losing in an appeal to the District Court of Appeals, the defendant firms agreed to settle the many more pending suits for undisclosed amounts and either cleaned up their operations or vacated them.

The laudatory descriptions of the personalities of the local, mostly black original farmers and their dedicated lawyers are unnecessarily long and detailed while those of the ambitious factory farmers with their unscrupulous law firms invading the area with integrated hog operations are uniformly and perhaps appropriately derogatory. Laudatory superlatives dominate in the lengthy descriptions of the plaintiffs seeking redress from the multibillion dollar multinational greedy conglomerates of Big Ag, some like Smithfield Foods owned by Chinese companies, in turn controlled by the communist government.

Vitriolic threats, intimidation, jury tampering, legislative capture, and publicity campaigns filled with known falsehoods are all used by the huge factory farm conglomerates and their supporters, some of whom are elected members of the state and federal governments.

Similar but mostly less complex problems have sprung up in many jurisdictions where multinational conglomerates have taken control over the business of growing our foods. All animal farms smell, as I can attest to having spent my childhood on one, but I am not aware of any traditional family farmer in Canada creating such a stink as to warrant a multimillion dollar lawsuit by neighbours.

There is no doubt about where the author’s sympathies lie. The plaintiffs before the judges smile and deliver “orations” whereas the defendants of the factory farm practices scowl, obfuscate and “bloviate”, seemingly one of the author’s favourite words. Byzantine law suits and counter suits in local, state, and federal courts and equally convoluted intertwined lopsided contracts with local family farmers with hidden racial bias overtones are described in unnecessary detail. We readers got your point 100 pages ago.

This is a meticulously researched true David vs Goliath battle in the U.S. agriculture industry, but it is unnecessarily long and a bit pedantic with pages-long descriptions of the personalities and emotions of the people involved. Dare I suggest that the author should stick to novels?

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Thanks, Michele and BookBrowse.