In the opening scenes of “The Smell of Money,” a captivating and at times heart-wrenching documentary directed by Shawn Bannon, we meet Elsie Herring, whose family has lived in the coastal plain region of eastern North Carolina since her grandfather, a freed slave, first purchased tracts of land there.
Long an agricultural area, it began its transition to industrial-agricultural in 1986, when the nation’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, and its contract farmers began operating Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) throughout the region.
Hundreds or even thousands of hogs are housed at each CAFO, crammed together in long buildings, their feces and urine collected and swept out into what the pork industry calls “lagoons.” In fact, these lagoons are nothing but open-air cesspools where the hog waste bakes in the sun. To dispose of the waste, Smithfield’s contract farmers spray it untreated over their fields, often mere feet from neighboring properties, ostensibly in the name of fertilization.
Particles from this noxious spray – along with flies and buzzards, the incessant squealing of pigs, and the unbearable stench from the CAFOs – drifts across property lines, settling onto homes and bodies and into the local water.
The lives of nearby residents, who are mostly Black, are irrevocably changed. They can no longer enjoy living in the places they’ve long called home, and many suffer serious health consequences. Yet the neighbors’ pleas for help – to the farmers, Smithfield, and government officials – are ignored for years. As Herring laments, “All the laws protect these industries. No one is protecting us.”
It is into this hellish-seeming existence that “The Smell of Money” drops its viewers. The film – which lists actress Kate Mara as an executive producer and has been championed by celebrities like Joaquin Phoenix – follows Herring and several other eastern Carolina residents as they push back against the environmental racism underlying the hog farming industry in the area, culminating in their decade-long litigation against Smithfield.
The film deftly interweaves the intimate storytelling of its subjects – plaintiffs in the litigation, clean water advocates, farmers, and researchers – with revealing imagery of the farms and the animals housed there. Animal lovers will no doubt feel anguish at the disturbing images of the severely mistreated pigs, and a full-length documentary could rightly focus on the cruel lives of the animals housed in the CAFOs and the resulting environmental degradation.
“The Smell of Money,” however, smartly focuses primarily on Herring and the other plaintiffs. By giving them ample space to tell their deeply personal stories, the film elevates the particular environmental justice movement they have spearheaded and exposes the way in which the human toll of these CAFOs is inextricably intertwined with race.
Indeed, in one jarring scene, we see a map of CAFOs in Eastern North Carolina seamlessly overlaid on another map of the areas of the state that were most heavily enslaved. As one resident explains about the refusal of Smithfield or the government to prevent this unfolding tragedy, “[t]hey don’t care because we’re Black. There ain’t no other way to put it.”
“The Smell of Money” does not shy away from the culpability of American consumers for the rise of these CAFOs, which are partly driven by our insatiable demand for meat. Neither does it excuse the contract farmers themselves. As one explains, in a surprisingly candid moment, “I spent the first half of my life killing people with nicotine, and the second half of my life killing people with pathogens and odor and sludge.”
But the movie keeps its ire focused on the Smithfield executives who seemingly prioritized profit over people, and the politicians who protect the hog farming industry over its lower-income Black citizens. Environmental racism, animal cruelty, and environmental destruction are exposed as mere inconveniences to the industrial-agricultural profit machine.
Beautifully crafted, “The Smell of Money” challenges our complacency with the environmental racism and degradation that often accompanies food production in this country. Yet the film’s protagonists are too strong, too dedicated for viewers to feel apathetic. Herring and her compatriots did not give up their fight; they did not abandon their homes. The least we can do is bear witness and watch.
If you go
What: “The Smell of Money” presented by the Tallahassee Film Society
When: 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 2; 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 3, and Sunday, Feb. 4
Where: All Saints Cinema, 918-½ Railroad Ave.
Cost: $11 general admission, $9 for TFS members and students; it: tallahasseefilms.com
James Parker-Flynn is the Director of the Center for Environmental, Energy, and Land Use Law at FSU Law.