What impact do factory farms have on the spaces of land they occupy? For his startling series Feedlots, Mishka Henner stitched together satellite images captured over sprawling factory farming operations.
Henner stumbled across these images of factory farms while researching satellite photographs of oil fields. He didn’t realize at first why these massive, multicolored pools were sitting in the middle of Texas. Eventually, he discovered that they were lagoons created by the animal waste from the farm feedlots. These waste lagoons contain elevated levels of ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorous, as well as pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, Cryptosporidium, and fecal coliform, plus antibiotics expelled in the animals’ waste.
You can see more feedlots on Kenner’s website. The image up top depicts Tascosa Feedyard and the bottom image depicts Coronado Feeders. Both are in Texas.
