Your Opinion: Corporate farms may benefit family operations

Dear Editor:

Final chapter.

After my education in pork processing and pork producers ended I began to see those corporate farms in a different light.

They owned their hogs to ensure a steady supply of hogs to their plant and also to ensure the quality of hogs. To keep their lines moving smoothly they wanted cookie-cutter hogs, hogs of the same size and type.

Corporate farms had followed the Wal-Mart business plan, get really big, control all levels of production to keep costs down and give the consumer what they want.

Ron Plains "Economies of Scale" explains this concept as the bigger you are the more you can spread out your expenses.

I realized that as pork producers we are sometimes our own worst enemy. Sure corporate agriculture had an effect on farming but it was not all negative.

Because of corporate agriculture and factory farms we (the little guys) have been able to take advantage of the markets that the corporates have developed, the technology that we would not have created ourselves and the science associated with animal health and welfare.

If your description of the family farmer is a guy raising a few hogs out on the dirt you would be dead wrong.

Today's family farmer is most likely not much different than one of those big boys.

He employs many of the same production practices, has employees as well as family members, involved in the farm and may be contracted to a processing plant.

When groups go after corporate agriculture seeking to bring it down through harsh regulations it is in fact the family farmer who will be hurt the most.

Corporate agriculture is actually the least of our worries. In 2008, ethanol became all the rage and in 2009 so many plants went online that the price of corn (than's what ethanol is derived from) went from roughly $2.50 per bushel to $8 per bushel. That price hike forced many pork producers out of the industry and the price has stayed close to that level until this year and yet those corn growers are family farmers too. Go figure.

Family farms have survived the last 25 years and we can survive if we want to for a long time, as long as the outside stirrers leave us be.

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