Drive through Scio and you will likely see red and white signs inscribed with the words “No Factory Chicken Farm in our community.”
Those signs are made by Christina Eastman, a fifth-generation farmer from Scio who lives up the road from where a future Foster Farms chicken site is planned, one of three proposed in the area.
Linn County officials discussed the enterprises at the Tuesday, Feb. 22 Board of Commissioners meeting and again at a town hall with farmers Wednesday, Feb. 23 in Scio.
Who’s across the road
The 38-acre site owned by Evergreen Ranch will house 16, 60-foot-by-600-foot poultry warehouses on Thomas Drive. Based on its permit filings with Linn County, the farm will raise as many as 4.5 million broiler chickens per year.
If approved, the chicken farm will neighbor the Broken Dam swimming hole on Thomas Creek. It also will be situated about a half-mile from Lourdes Elementary School and Lourdes Catholic Church.
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The Evergreen Ranch site is one of three planned chicken farms around the mid-Willamette Valley. They include a Foster Farms contractor on Jefferson-Scio Road to the west and a Hiday Poultry Farms operation in Aumsville to the north in Marion County. All are in the permit-pulling stage.
Eastman is among a number of mid-valley farmers who believe the chicken farms in the region will bring pollution, traffic and deep-pocketed investors bent on compromising the community’s historic character.
Tied hands
On Tuesday, Eastman and other sympathetic activists aired their grievances to Linn County commissioners.
Many say they fear the planned chicken farms could threaten wildlife and run neighboring water wells dry to feed their livestock.
“They’ll buy our water rights and do whatever they want because they don’t have the love of the state,” Eastman said. “This is our home, and I think it’s the most beautiful in the state.”
Linn County commissioners made it clear on Tuesday that land use permits are not theirs to deny by law.
“The law doesn’t give us any place in the process,” Linn County Commissioner Will Tucker said. “The best I can do is call and ask people to hold public meetings.”
Resistance online
Opposition to mid-valley chicken factory farms went online last year when a Facebook group, Farmers Against Foster Farms, began making waves. Their website is a collage of maps, land permits and public records related to the three chicken farms still on the table.
One of the minds behind the group is farmer Kendra Kimbirauskas. She raises goats, hogs, beef cattle and poultry with her husband in Scio, where she wants to take a stand against “big chicken.”
“We have got to insert ourselves in this conversation,” Kimbirauskas said on Tuesday. “Otherwise, if we don’t, we’re not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.”
Farmers Against Foster Farms posts graphic renditions of their claims on their website. They include a so-called “smell zone” illustrating the 400-foot radius of noxious odors the farms are liable to emit.
Neighbor wars
For Eric Simon, a Brownsville chicken farmer developing the Jefferson-Scio Road site, his critics can get carried away.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous what they’re saying to people,” Simon said. “My closest neighbor is 1,400 feet away.”
Simon started in the business 20 years ago when his family was looking for ways to keep a roof over their heads. He also owns Ideal Ag Supply, a farm supply store in Brownsville.
The 60-acre site will raise as many as 3.4 million chickens per year and house 12, 60-foot-by-600-foot poultry warehouses along a desolate span of Jefferson-Scio Road.
Simon applied for a state permit in 2020, which requires him to secure the water rights he needs and mitigate biohazards.
“We’re working within the law,” Simon said. “We’ve gone above and beyond what’s required of us.”
Simon chose the location, he said, purposefully to avoid a neighbor war, not start one.
He’s engaged with Farmers Against Foster Farms on and offline with mixed success. Some folks, Simon said, just have questions. Others want to fight.
Foster Farms has been sued in recent years by watchdog groups who have accused it of inhumane slaughtering methods and waste disposal.
In 2020, a California farm workers union sued Foster Farms for nine deaths it attributed to workplace conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Simon acknowledged there are bad actors in his industry. He wants people to know it incentivizes good chicken farmers.
“We get judged on our birds,” Simon said. “The better their conditions, the more money I make.”
He hopes to break ground by this spring and hire five workers at the farm.
Taking action
More than 50 people showed up at Scio’s ZCBJ Hall on Wednesday night to brainstorm ways to have their voices heard in Salem.
Linn County Commissioner Sherie Sprenger advised the audience to take up the issue with state agencies and, ultimately, their state legislators.
“What works is facts,” said Sprenger, a former state legislator representing Linn County. “Get your science, get your data, get a hydrologist to study the water.”
Using donations, Farmers Against Foster Farms hired an engineer to conduct a water study on the proposed chicken farms, according to Kimbirauskas. The study was submitted to the Oregon Department of Agriculture in October.
Farmers Against Foster Farms will have their first meeting with members of the Oregon Senate to discuss chicken factory farms. The virtual informational session is tentatively scheduled with the Senate Natural Resources Committee at 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 1.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to identify Kendra Kimbirauskas as a farmer.
Tim Gruver covers the city of Albany and Linn County. He can be contacted at 541-812-6114 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter via @T_TimeForce.
