In todays world you can never know what to expect with not only the hog market, but any type of farming market, or any other market in general, for that matter. You could be selling your pigs for $1 dollar a pound one day... And wake up to find the price has gone down dramatically... to something like .60 cent per pound.
This type of crises is something that has wiped out small farmers since back in the 1980s. The prices fluctuated all over the place since then, and typically still tend to do the same sort of thing today.
Todays shortage excuses is for the new law changes in California stating that you cannot use gestation crate facilities if you want to ship your pork into California. This new law has greatly affected how much pork gets shipped into California. And then to top that, many people in California are striking against the way pigs are raise in most of the nation. Confinement farming. This has caused a lot of people to review wear their food is coming from, because most of them have no clue...
For the people who do know what it means to eat naturally raised meats know that the meats you will get from the large producer is the bottom of the food-chain when it comes to quality. The producer is never involved with the labor, so the treatment of the pigs is often terrible. And the confinement environment is just awful for the pigs.
I'm all for the contractors. If you build a hog barn to make a buck, who can blame you. You are doing whats practical as well. But in my opinion, the practical way isn't always the right way.
The producer wants to be "large and in charge", so to say. Large producers like Smithfield® foods or Cargill® are looking to make the maximum amount of money they can of off each individual hog site they own or contract. In some cases they loose money, while in other cases they gain. But the biggest thing the producer wants to do is be the biggest and most corporate producer out their.
If you are the biggest producer, you are the biggest butcher contractor. This means that the largest producer will nail the most butcher contracts. And they will try to contract as much out to each butcher like hormel, farmland, and others so that they will not need to buy from other producers. This causes something the world would call, "
Acquisition (
One company is taking over controlling interest in another company). The definition is pretty much self explanatory. The smaller producers start to loose money in a time of market crises or when they cannot find butcher contracts due to the fact that some mass producer came in and gave the butchery(s) a deal on a contract that they couldn't refuse. This has happened since the 1980s during the farm crises. And has continued to happen since then. And it didn't just happen because of nothing. Large corporate industries want to be in control of the market so that they can eliminate the chance of competition, like a guy who raises 250 pigs every turn. The middle-class farmer life was destroyed and buried in the 1980s, devastating many farmers. The smaller farmers have to sell out and the contract farmers have to find a different contractor to house pigs for. And sometimes those new contractors have different requirements so the farmer or contractee may have to completely renovate his or her hog confinement to meat those standards. This can cost well over $100,000 dollars to do in some cases even. Today we have about 5 or so major producers. And about 1% of small to middle-class farmers are left around today.
The world has changed. The pork has gotten cheaper to produce and grown in production size so much that they have eliminated the small guy all together. And at what price. Food that is terrible for the people that is it fed to? And a terrible for the animal that will soon be that food.
I'd personally like to see small farms all over the place like my own.
My farm is a small one. About 27 sows out here and gaining. But I take good care of my pigs. Everyday I hop over the cattle gate to get into the big open dirt lot i've got for them. They are free to go in and out of the main barn as they please, and they have access to port-a-huts as well. As soon as I hop in the pin the pigs all look right up at me. They know it's feeding time. And they know they are about to get a nice big mud-hole to roll around in. Heck I've even got a 100 pounder that we saved after it escaped off of a truck while someone was doing loads for a confinement industry that I can whistle at and it will come running right up to me and start rutting my shoe and biting my boots.
After i get done feeding and watering the pigs I walk trough and check all of them individually. I make sure that they are all being active as they should be and that they are all coming along well with the pregnancy. If i have a sow that has already had piglets and is in a nesting box or port a hut with them already I will check them daily as well. I like to assure my pigs are living happily and that they are not receiving any medications so that the meat is all natural! I will say that each litter I have, I keep a gilt back. And that gilt produces stronger piglets then the last. I am getting a heritage immunity built up in my pigs. They are becoming more and more hardy and live better in the colder weather now as well.
I like pigs. I like the fact I can breed them and finish them out and create a meat from a pure bred heritage pig that is not some hybrid pig. We have all sorts of purebreds like berkshires, red wattles, hampshires, and many others although berkshire seems to be our most popular sell.
