Running the small producer out of business

The big “evil” corporate farms, or “factory farms”, as so many love to call them, just got another boost up the ladder with McDonalds recent announcement to end the purchase of pork from producers using gestation crates.

So for everyone chasing the all-natural, free range, antibiotic free, hormone free meat, you can point the finger at groups like HSUS when it becomes a little harder to find. The small to medium size pork producer doesn’t have the overhead to make the expensive changes necessary to revamp their entire system.

I recently read an great article, written by a pork producer. He pointed out that there are times in the business, that it just ain’t pretty! “With livestock, you get dead stock.” It’s just part of life.

The author pointed out that he wasn’t going to blow smoke up anyone’s ass, that in between scratching his pigs behind the ears, he was also carrying buckets of still born baby pigs out. Life and death happens on the farm and ranch.

But life on the small farm and ranch is getting pushed out – but not by the big corporate farms, as some would like to believe. There is a market for home grown, small family farm products. It’s out there. The problem is that anti-ag groups are successfully pushing their agendas, putting the small and even medium farmer out of business, because of the regulations and costs.  

Le Mars, Iowa pork producer and current president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, Bill Tentinger, says it all comes at a cost.  And it will eventually be the consumer’s cost.
 “We’re just going to see some producers who are going to say, ‘you know, I’ve had enough—and I’m not going down that road’,” Tentinger says. “We’re going to see larger units. That’s where the sows—the farrowing business–is going to go,” Tentinger says, “because the smaller producer is just probably not—if he needs to make that switch, he’s not going to do it.”
Because he can’t afford it!
There seems to be this huge misunderstanding between ranchers/farmers and the general public.
I was up in the mountains a few summers ago, the Salida area, and had an interesting conversation with a young man working at a gas station about “the greedy ranchers selling all the land for money.” He didn’t seem to have any concept on the costs of running a ranch, and trying to survive in the business. All he cared about was the fact that the land was being developed and the “greedy ranchers” were running off with their hordes of money.
The anti-ag groups of the world are on task, making sure the small and medium producers are put out of business….which is what they really want.
 “My goal is the abolition of all animal agriculture.”— HSUS grassroots coordinator John “J.P.” Goodwin
Back on the pig note – in a couple of months, Jadi will have two new pigs at our place, for her 4H project. She typically tries to get barrow – male fixed pigs, instead of gilts – female brats. The females are typically pushy and mean, and in the years she’s had one of each, it has not been unusual to go out and find one or both bloody and beat up from fighting. That’s what happens when pigs are housed together. They fight…and they bleed…and they make a horrible noise, sometimes just when you touch them. But does that make Jadi and I animal abusers?