Your Opinion: Pork production and family farms

Dear Editor:

Here is part two, as promised.

Pork producers are a strange lot, when we do something it tends to be overkill. When asked to ramp up production we really did.

But Japan did not come to the U.S. to purchase their pork, they went to Denmark and Mexico.

About the time these hogs hit the market, Smithfield (yes the same Smithfield that the Chinese recently bought) bought two small processing plants and closed them reducing the shackle space on a per day slaughter by 6,000-8,000. Hogs backed up. You can't hold them over for very long.

Because of the over supply the price of hogs started dropping. Break even price at that time was $34 per hundred weight, meaning as pork producers we needed $85 per hog to meet our expenses, no profit. Some producers needed more, some less, but when hogs dropped to $8 per hundred weight or roughly $20 for a 250 lb. hog everyone lost money.

There were a lot of pork producers back then. Many of them were feeder pig producers (did you know that Missouri was at one time the feeder pig capital of the U.S.?) A lot of producers didn't have many sows, not much invested in buildings and they also had a job in town or another source of income. These were the guys who would get in and out of the industry without a second thought. They got out.

The pork producers who hung in there, those who had buildings lost a lot of equity that for several years translated into a drop off in equipment and machinery sales.

Looking back the carnage was relatively short lived but it changed the pork industry.

While independent family farm pork producers struggled to get back on their feet we noticed that the Premium Standard Farms, Cargill, Tyson and Murphy Farms, all who owned their hogs and the processing plants fared pretty well. They made their money on the back end out the door to your dinner plate.

Pork producers lobbied the Pork Producers Association to support our efforts to form and independent pork producer-owned processing plant. They refused.

A group called Family Farms Pork was formed to explore this project and I was elected president. This was an amazing experience that changed my thinking and I will share with you next letter.

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