How robots and AI will change agriculture
Robotics and AI are reshaping the way we grow food. Innovative robotic farm equipment company shares how AI will impact the future of agriculture.
Bloomberg – QuickTake
A fire caused by high winds at an Ohio pig farm facility caused “catastrophic” damage and killed thousands of pigs, fire officials said, marking a new and devastating barn inferno that has contributed to the deaths of millions of animals in recent years.
The massive fire broke out on Wednesday, February 25, at Fine Oak Farm in Union Township, Madison County, west of Ohio’s capital Columbus, according to the Central Township Joint Fire District. Firefighters were called to the barn fire just before 12pm local time.
The incident was later upgraded to a commercial fire after Chief Brian Bennington observed a “large plume of smoke that could be seen from a distance” and requested additional resources. Multiple local fire departments and several other emergency agencies were called to the scene.
“What our crew encountered upon arrival was an extremely difficult and heartbreaking event,” Bennington said in a Feb. 26 statement.
The fire chief explained that the facility was a large farm complex used for pig farming, consisting of five large agricultural buildings, four of which housed approximately 7,500 pigs. When crews arrived on scene, they found two of the barns engulfed in flames, Bennington said.
Bennington said crews faced high wind conditions, which significantly affected firefighting efforts. The fire destroyed three barns and killed about 6,000 pigs.
Firefighters rescued a barn and about 1,500 pigs, the fire chief added. No injuries were reported as a result of the incident.
Bennington highlighted the support of the farming community throughout Madison and Clark counties, as several farmers responded with water trucks. “Ohio’s rural farming communities are tight-knit and really step up when their own farming communities are in need,” he says.
The incident remains under investigation and the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office will determine the cause and origin of the fire. Bennington said arson is not suspected at this time and there is no ongoing threat to the public.
“Rapidly changing fire behavior”
Thick smoke from the fire was visible for miles, and Bennington said the first units to arrive encountered a situation where the fire was coming from the other side of the pig farm facility.
The fire chief noted that this incident required extensive water shuttle operations due to limited rural water supplies in the area. Crews deployed multiple handlines and used aerial equipment to try to extinguish the fire, but “were faced with extremely difficult conditions throughout the incident,” Bennington said.
Bennington said sustained winds of about 20 mph and gusts up to 35 mph accelerated the fire’s spread. He added that strong winds had made it “extremely difficult” to contain the fire and caused “rapid changes in fire behavior” across the agricultural estate.
The fire chief said the fire was brought under control after about four to five hours by firefighters from four different counties.
“Unfortunately, the fire caused devastating damage to our business. A significant portion of our agricultural structures were destroyed,” Bennington said in a Feb. 25 statement.
Latest major fire affecting hog farms in Ohio
The incident at Fine Oak Farms is the latest large-scale fire to cause significant damage to Ohio hog farms in recent years.
In August 2024, about 1,100 pigs were killed in the village of Versailles, about 80 miles northwest of Dayton, Ohio, according to data from the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute. In March 2022, about 2,000 pigs died in a barn fire at the Kenneth Scholl pig farm in Brown Township, just west of Columbus.
Before the Fine Oak Farms fire, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that 162 sheep, horses, cows, chickens and other animals had died in other barn fires in Ohio this year.
Hundreds of thousands of animals die in barn fires every year
Hundreds of thousands of animals are killed in barn fires across the country each year, according to data from the Animal Welfare Institute. The organization says more than 9 million livestock have died in barn fires since 2013.
As of February 26, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that 118,738 livestock have died in barn fires in the United States this year, including the incident at Fine Oak Farms. In separate incidents in North Carolina and Georgia in January and another in Missouri earlier this month, most of the livestock killed were chickens.
“Most of the fatal barn fires occurred in colder states, particularly the upper Midwest and Northeast, with the highest number of barn fires occurring in New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois,” the organization said. “The degree of cold experienced by the state appears to be a greater factor in the prevalence of barn fires than the intensity of the state’s livestock agricultural production.”
More than 2.53 million livestock died in barn fires from 2022 to 2024, the Animal Welfare Institute announced in its latest report on livestock deaths from barn fires in 2025. The Animal Welfare Association said the high death toll was “mainly” due to fires in large-scale operations housing anywhere from a few thousand animals to more than a million animals.
According to the Animal Welfare Research Institute, the majority (98% or more) of deaths from these incidents during this period involved domestic birds such as chickens and turkeys. But in 2023, a massive fire at a dairy farm in West Texas became the deadliest livestock fire in the state’s history, and the deadliest cattle fire in the United States in at least a decade.
A fire at the Southfork Dairy Farm near Dimmit, Texas, killed 18,000 cows. At the time, Dimmit’s former mayor, Roger Malone, called the incident “mind-boggling.”
“I don’t think anything like this has ever happened around here before. It’s a real tragedy,” Malone said.
Contributor: Rick Jervis, USA TODAY. Shahid Meighan, Columbus Detachment
