Livestock Feedlots and CAFOs in Sampson County, North Carolina

A national #1, not a regional talking point

It's easy for a county to claim it's 'big in agriculture.' Sampson County's claim is specific and USDA-verified: per the Census of Agriculture, Sampson had over 1 million hogs and $966 million in hog and pig sales in 2022 -- roughly 3% of all hog and pig sales in the entire United States concentrated in a single North Carolina county, making it the top pork-producing county in the country. North Carolina overall is one of the nation's dominant pork-producing states (11.1% of the U.S. hog inventory, 13.4% of hogs sold nationally, per the same data), and within the state, that production is concentrated most heavily in a tight cluster of southeastern counties -- Sampson foremost, alongside Duplin, Bladen, and Robeson. Sampson and Duplin together account for roughly half of every hog raised in a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) anywhere in North Carolina.

Sampson's agricultural profile doesn't stop at swine. The county also produces more turkeys than any other county in North Carolina, according to John Locke Foundation reporting on the state's turkey industry, and NC Cooperative Extension and Sampson County tourism sources describe the county as the state's most agriculturally diverse -- a genuine mix of row crops, hog operations, poultry houses, and smaller diversified farms, often within a few miles of one another. For anyone buying rural land in Sampson County, the practical result is that proximity to a large-scale livestock operation isn't a remote possibility to plan around -- it's one of the single most common land-use realities you'll encounter, whether you're looking to buy, lease near, or avoid one.

How swine and poultry operations actually get sited and permitted here

Unlike many land-use questions in North Carolina, where county zoning is the primary lever, swine farm siting is substantially governed by state law rather than county zoning ordinances. North Carolina's Swine Farm Siting Act (G.S. Chapter 106, Article 67) sets specific minimum distances for new or expanded swine houses and lagoons: at least 1,500 feet from an occupied residence not owned by the farm operator, 2,500 feet from a school, hospital, or church, 500 feet from any property boundary, and 500 feet from a well supplying a public water system. A separate, shorter setback governs where waste from a lagoon can actually be applied to land: the outer edge of a lagoon's spray field or land-application area must stay at least 75 feet from any property boundary with an occupied residence on it and from any perennial stream or river (excluding irrigation ditches and canals). These are confirmed statutory figures, not estimates -- but confirm with NC DEQ or a permitting consultant whether any of them have since been adjusted by a subsequent legislative session (the 2026 NC Farm Act, for instance, made technical corrections to the Act's floodplain-construction and notice provisions), and whether a specific operation is grandfathered under an older standard as a legacy facility.

On top of state siting law, any operation crossing certain size thresholds needs an actual permit from the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) under its Animal Feeding Operations program: swine, wet poultry, and cattle operations are generally covered by state general permits (reissued roughly every five years), while larger or non-standard operations may require an individual permit instead. A separate and genuinely important fact for anyone evaluating an existing operation: North Carolina made permanent, in 2007, a moratorium (originally imposed in 1997) on new or expanded swine waste lagoon-and-sprayfield systems -- meaning no new lagoon-based systems can be permitted today. Roughly 2,000 existing swine operations statewide continue operating under lagoon systems that were grandfathered in before the moratorium took effect, and that legacy-versus-new distinction matters directly if you're evaluating an existing Sampson County swine operation: it is very likely running on a legacy lagoon system that could not be newly built today, which affects both its regulatory status and, in some cases, its eventual closure or conversion obligations.

A live, current regulatory shift: the 2025 NC Supreme Court ruling

This is not a settled, static regulatory area -- it changed meaningfully in 2025. The North Carolina Supreme Court, in a case brought by the NC Farm Bureau against NC DEQ, ruled (in a 5-2 decision along party lines, decided in the court's term ending around mid-2025) that state regulators had improperly included certain conditions in the general permits governing industrialized hog, cattle, and poultry operations. The court struck down requirements that had included an annual reporting obligation (a summary of animal counts, permitted lagoons, and acreage receiving manure application) and requirements to measure phosphorus loss from fields receiving waste application and to conduct groundwater monitoring near lagoons sitting within a 100-year floodplain. Of North Carolina's roughly 2,000 hog CAFOs, the great majority operate under general rather than individual permits, and the floodplain groundwater-monitoring condition alone would have affected roughly 55 operations, or about 3% of general-permit holders.

For a Sampson County land buyer, the practical takeaway is that the compliance and reporting burden on existing CAFOs statewide was reduced by this ruling relative to what regulators had previously required -- and that the underlying legal fight between agricultural interests and environmental regulators over how tightly these operations should be monitored remains an active, contested area of North Carolina law, not a fixed rulebook. If you're evaluating land near an existing operation specifically because of environmental or nuisance concerns, or evaluating land to build a new operation yourself, confirm the current, in-force general permit conditions directly with NC DEQ rather than relying on a snapshot of what applied before or immediately after this ruling.

Right to Farm protection: why it matters more here than almost anywhere else in the state

North Carolina's Right to Farm Act (G.S. § 106-700) bars most nuisance lawsuits against a qualifying farming operation, and its 2018-2019 amendments -- enacted directly in response to a wave of major federal jury verdicts against large hog-farm operators for odor, noise, and other nuisance claims brought by neighboring residents in this general region of southeastern North Carolina -- added real limits on who can sue and when: a plaintiff generally must be the legal possessor of nearby property within a limited distance of the operation, must sue within one year of the farm's establishment or a fundamental change to it, and mediation is generally required before a case can proceed to court. Any local ordinance that would otherwise treat a qualifying farm as a nuisance is void under the statute.

If you're buying land near an existing, qualifying Sampson County livestock operation, understand that this legal framework runs strongly in the operation's favor against new nuisance complaints from a new neighbor -- moving in near an established hog or turkey operation and later suing over odor or noise is a much narrower path in North Carolina than it would be in many other states. Conversely, this same regulatory and litigation history is also why environmental and community advocacy groups have continued to raise concerns -- including past federal civil-rights complaints alleging that CAFO permitting in counties like Sampson and Duplin has disproportionately affected nearby Black, Latino, and Native American communities -- about the industry's community and environmental impact in this exact part of the state. Whichever side of this you're evaluating land from, understand that it is a genuinely active, still-contested regulatory and political landscape, not a closed chapter.

What to actually check before buying livestock-adjacent land in Sampson County

1. If buying land to build a new swine or poultry operation, confirm current Swine Farm Siting Act distance requirements and any Sampson County zoning overlay directly with NC DEQ and Sampson County Planning & Zoning -- remember that the 2007 lagoon-and-sprayfield moratorium means a new lagoon-based waste system cannot be permitted; ask what waste-management systems are actually available for new construction today.
2. If buying land with an existing operation on it, confirm the operation's current general or individual NC DEQ permit status and whether it's operating on a legacy (grandfathered) lagoon system -- this affects both its regulatory obligations and your own future flexibility with the property.
3. If buying land near, but not part of, an existing operation, understand that the Right to Farm Act's protections generally favor the existing operation against new nuisance claims -- factor odor, noise, and truck-traffic realities into your decision now rather than assuming legal recourse will be available later.
4. Have well water on any nearby parcel tested for nitrates and bacteria before closing, particularly on land near an active lagoon or spray field -- a straightforward, inexpensive step that matters more in Sampson County than in most other parts of the state given the concentration of livestock waste application nearby.
5. Stay aware that both the regulatory framework (as the 2025 Supreme Court ruling shows) and the broader political and community debate around CAFOs in this region continue to evolve -- confirm current status directly with NC DEQ and Sampson County rather than treating this page, or any other secondary source, as a permanent statement of the rules.