Livestock Concentration
Tue, 15 Nov 1994 18:46:06 -0500

Chuck Benbrook's recent post commenting on key issues in the debate about
farm size included a comment about a cutting edge issue in the midwest today
being livestock concentration and corporate hog farmers.

A couple of things worth noting in that debate:

Farmers using and developing sustainable swine production practices
(including alternative feeds, pasture farrowing, grazing, low-cost housing,
and others) are beginning to produce high-quality pigs very cost effectively
-- even down into the mid-20s (dollars per hundredweight). Mark Honeyman at
Iowa State has been doing some ground-breaking work in the area, some
excellent farmers have developed their own strategies and made them work, and
more and more farmers are beginning to take notice. Such innovative and
profitable approaches also have the virtue of requiring relatively little
capital, and so are accessible to beginning farmers and existing farmers
seeking to diversify. For midwestern states that raise so much of the
nation's hogs, these developments give hope to a further expansion of
sustainable agriculture.

However, no matter how efficiently farmers produce pork, and no matter how
environmentally sound their practices, it won't matter if they can not gain
fair access to markets. That is what is so disturbing about the North
Carolina ("factory farm") model of hog production -- at the same time that
hog numbers in North Carolina increased so dramatically, the numbers of hog
farmers plummetted. The percentage loss of hog farms in NC was much greater
than other states. Why is this so? One reason -- the strong relationship
between meatpackers and corporate farms, including joint ventures, financing
deals, direct ownership, and favorable terms for volume. These large
producer/meatpacker relationships denied fair access to markets to
independent producers, so much so that hog prices received by integrated
contractors in North Carolina run at $12/cwt higher than those for
independents. (Numbers are from the fall of 1993).

The debate not only needs to include farmer- and environment-friendly
production and management practices and strategies, but deal with the reality
that the issue is not really about efficiency, but about economic power and
control. Alternative markets may supply a useful strategy for a number of
sustainable producers, but it may be useful to think of the enforcement and
strengthening of the Packers and Stockyards Act as another strategy to keep
the playing field level so a more sustainable agricultural system can

Mark Schultz
Land Stewardship Project
Marine, Minnesota