The Seaboard Corp. tries to complete an integrated project around a hog plant located in Guymon Okla., that could increase its slaughter capacity from 14 000 head /day to 16 000 head. This project is tied to swine production units in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Last spring, Seaboard Corp. acquired real estate (in Kansas and just across the border in Oklahoma) and informed the official of Seward County, Kansas of their plan for pork production units and a feed mill building project. However, Seward County controversy and the opposition toward corporate pork production it has arisen in other states that had previously supported corporate farming threaten the project. A vote was taken in Seward County and an overwhelming majority of citizen want to rescind corporate farming. The legality of this vote is questioned and the Kansas attorney general concluded that the vote is non-binding because the citizens are not specifically authorized by the law to rescind corporate farming while county commissioners can. However legal advisors of the county commission has interpreted the home-rule authority differently and consider the vote binding. The county commission may have to vote and the commissioners who supported the Seaboard Corp. are under severe pressure.
Disputes over corporate farming are happening on many other Kansas counties even if some of them had endorsed corporate farming in the past (particularly with Murphy Farms in Hodgeman County over a 10 000-sow facility). The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has environmental standards but the counties (as allowed by the law) can create more restrictive ones.
The Kansas Pork Producers Council is afraid the counties may start treating farms differently and that expansion may become difficult if county and state regulations become excessive.
The opponents are concerned with the important number of hogs (500 000) that would be put in Seward County and the impact it can have on the environment, property value and the influx of low-wage, immigrant labor it could bring. They consider that the tax revenue from those operations would not outbalance the negative impact on the county and that the existing KDHE’s policy on waste regulation is inadequate.

The disputes are severe and could have an impact on all the pork production in that state because the line between pork corporate farming and pork production is thin (today’s corporate production units size could become tomorrow farmers production size). Links between concentrated production and environmental rules are not outlined. Some dairy farmers are taking position against corporate farming.