‘Towns just turned to dust’: how factory hog farms help hollow out rural communities

Almost a third of hogs in the US are now raised in Iowa but a new report questions whether that's good for residents or local economies

Lew Carter, a retired long haul truck driver, has always preferred the country. In 1990 he bought a small plot on a hill surrounded by farm fields near his home town of Williams, in Hamilton county, Iowa, where he hoped to retire.

Carter planted the homestead with a thicket of trees and replaced the dilapidated farm buildings with a storage shed and modular house. He met his second wife, Kathy, and in 2008 she moved in too.