By Sidney Cruze, Photography by Doug Van de Zande, June 2010

• Introduction
• Covered lagoons clear the air
• One of the nicest farms here
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Thomas and Robert Butler have fond memories of their father. A lifelong farmer, he instilled a strong work ethic in his sons.

“He always told us, ‘It’s our farm. We all work hard, and we all benefit,’” Thomas says. “Then he joked that when he died, we would probably sell the farm and move to town.”

Years later the Butlers are still farming the family land; they operate a large-scale hog farm on 108 acres in Harnett County. Once traditional tobacco farmers, they are now agricultural pioneers working to promote a hog waste storage system that farmers can use to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, earn carbon credits and transform animal waste into electricity. Their use of the system has attracted attention from across the country and helped put North Carolina on the cutting edge of agriculture’s green revolution.

The Butlers grew up helping their father grow tobacco. Changes in the industry brought changes to their farm, and by the early 1990s, they were leasing most of their land to other growers.
“We love the farm. But with tobacco on the way out, we were more or less losing it,” Robert says.

They began raising hogs to keep the farmland in the family, and today they house 8,000 animals on the property. As farmers the Butlers are committed to being good stewards of their land, and they know confinement hog farms can be hard on the environment, if not properly managed. So when Thomas learned about a system for storing hog waste that would make their operation more earth-friendly, they decided to give it a try.