Livestock Feedlots and CAFOs in Becker County, Minnesota

The fight that rewrote the ordinance: a proposed 3,000-pig feedlot in Spring Creek Township

Becker County's current feedlot ordinance exists in its present form largely because of a specific, contested 2022 application. Erica and Eric Zurn of rural Callaway, working with the Swine Vet Center of St. Peter, applied for a conditional use permit for three barn sites in Spring Creek Township -- 2,000 adult pigs plus another 1,000 growing animals for weaning -- a roughly 3,000-head operation. The county granted the conditional use permit in September 2022, but with a stipulation that the operator reach a road-maintenance agreement with the township over hauling traffic on 350th Street; as of that October, the two sides had not agreed, and the road dispute became its own point of contention at county board meetings. The controversy prompted the county board to enact a one-year moratorium on new feedlot conditional use permits shortly after, specifically to give the county time to rework its agricultural zoning ordinance before considering another large-scale application -- and, notably, the county formed an ad-hoc committee that included local farmers to help write the replacement ordinance, rather than drafting it solely through staff and the planning commission.

What the county board actually adopted in January 2025

The Becker County Board unanimously approved the rewritten feedlot ordinance in January 2025, applying to new feedlots going forward. Its core standard is a size-tiered water-body setback rather than a flat number: a new feedlot with fewer than 1,500 animal units must sit at least 300 feet from the ordinary high water level of a lake or other public water, while a new feedlot at or above 1,500 animal units must sit at least 500 feet back -- meaning a genuinely large operation faces a materially larger buffer than a mid-sized one. Separately, and regardless of size, no new feedlot may be sited within a shore impact zone or a bluff impact zone at all -- the size-based setback distances don't create an exception to that categorical ban. An existing feedlot that already sits within 300 feet of the ordinary high water level, or within a bluff impact zone, is allowed to expand, but only in the direction away from those protected zones, not toward or within them.

The ordinance also added a groundwater-monitoring requirement: a feedlot operator must install one deep monitoring well located between 50 and 200 feet from the feedlot itself, with a baseline measurement taken and annual testing after that, aimed at catching any pollutant migration into the aquifer before it becomes a larger problem. On top of the county's own permit, an operator must still obtain whatever certificate of compliance, interim permit, or animal feedlot permit Minnesota state law requires based on the operation's size -- the county ordinance is a local land-use layer on top of the state's own MPCA feedlot permitting framework, not a replacement for it.

What this means whether you want to build a feedlot or live near one

If you're evaluating Becker County agricultural land to site a feedlot, calculate your planned animal-unit count before assuming a setback distance -- crossing the 1,500-animal-unit threshold roughly doubles your required water-body setback, which can materially change which parcels are large enough to work, and confirm your site isn't in a mapped shore or bluff impact zone at all, since no setback distance cures that categorical restriction. Budget for the monitoring well and its ongoing annual testing as a real, recurring cost, not just an initial permitting hurdle, and confirm with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency what state-level permit tier your operation's size triggers on top of the county's own conditional use permit process.

If you're instead buying land near existing agricultural operations and want to understand what could be built nearby, ask Becker County Planning & Zoning directly whether any feedlot conditional use permit applications are pending near a specific parcel -- the 2022 Spring Creek Township case shows this can become a genuine, multi-year local controversy affecting road use, water quality, and property values well before (and after) a permit is actually granted. Because this ordinance is recent and was written in direct response to a specific contested case, don't assume an older description of Becker County's feedlot rules, or a generic statewide summary, reflects the current size-tiered setback and monitoring-well standards -- confirm the current ordinance text and any pending applications directly with the county.