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Iowa producer Tom Frantzen
employs pasture and cropland in managed grazing strips that
allow him to produce a 30-pound feeder pig "for half the price
you can indoors." Photo by Prescott Bergh, courtesy of Minnesota
Department of Agriculture |
For 14 years, New Hampton, Iowa, farmer Tom Frantzen reared hogs
from farrow to finish, alternating the 1,200 hogs he raised annually
from closed buildings each winter to pastures each summer. The buildings,
where Frantzen raised the sows in pens with slatted floors, were
an unpleasant winter home. In the cold months, the hogs did not gain
weight very efficiently and behaved aggressively.
Pig waste fell through the slats into a pit. Frantzen
pumped and disposed of manure on his crop fields, where he grew
corn, soybeans and hay. "Our manure management was haphazard," he
recalls. "I was both over-applying and under-utilizing those nutrients."
Frantzen had to race to the finish line every season. And while
he always got everything done, reaching that point was difficult
and stressful. In 1992, he decided to create a more environmentally
sound system that would be both profitable and allow him to spend
more time outside. The linchpin: a combination of pasture and housing
that brought his livestock and crops into sync. Today, permanent pastures, rotating strip pastures and cropland
offer him a plethora of options for feeding pigs, including having
them "hog down" - or self-harvest - crops. As they move across
the fields, the pigs spread their own manure. Deep-straw bedding
in huts or sheds provides warmth and exercise for the animals and
produces a pack of solid waste that is far easier to handle and
spread on crop fields than the slurry from Frantzen's former liquid
manure system. The new life cycle worked. After receiving a producer grant from
USDA's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program
to document the economics of farrowing hogs on pasture, Frantzen
found he could halve his feed costs compared to his former indoor/outdoor
system. The SARE grant "showed we can produce a 30-pound feeder
pig for half the price that you can indoors," he said. Over three years, Frantzen's costs to raise a pastured feeder
pig ranged from $10 to $13.50, taking into account all supplemental
feed, land expenses and labor. "On a farm that produces grain and finishes hogs, we want the
grain to go into the animal during the finishing stage and the
manure to go back to the crop fields," said Frantzen, who also
raises 75 Angus brood cows. "From the hoops, I can put composted
manure on the correct field at the correct time. The odors aren't
bad, there's no pumping involved and it puts the animals in an
environment they like." Today, Frantzen is as busy as ever, but he is a lot happier. "Working
conditions for me weren't nearly as good as working outdoors," he
said. "The health of the animals wasn't good, either. You could
almost see the stress on the sows in the farrowing crates. Now,
they seem to enjoy life. And so do I." Farmers like Frantzen who successfully produce pork on a small
scale have preserved their independence in the face of the consolidating
hog industry. In the late 1980s, hogs began disappearing from small
family farms. Now, most pigs are produced by corporations, with
35 percent of hogs sent to market produced by just 20 firms selling
more than 500,000 per year. Usually, one company owns the pigs
and retains farmers to raise the animals - often on the farmer's
property, using his buildings and manure lagoons. Those changes have narrowed choices for farmers, steering most
toward a new option - working under a contract using the corporation's
methods of production. Corporate contracts offer pork producers
more certainty about earning modest profits than raising pigs independently
but also require farmers to shoulder considerable debt to construct
confinement buildings and assume environmental liability for manure. The corporations own the processing plants and distribution system,
too, effectively locking small, independent producers out of the
wholesale pork market. "It is hard for small producers to put together
a semiload of market hogs or find a buyer who will even accept
hogs without a contract," said Martin Kleinschmidt, an analyst
with the Center for Rural Affairs. "If you want to sell commodity
hogs, you have to be big. If you want to stay small, you have to
look for niche markets." This bulletin showcases examples of another way to raise pork
profitably.While many of the farmers profiled here have assumed
bigger workloads - particularly in designing hog systems that work
on their farms and identifying unique marketing channels - all
appreciate the greater flexibility and a better quality of life
inherent in systems with alternative housing or a strong pasture
component.
Use this bulletin to gain ideas about alternative swine systems,
then consult the list of resources for
more detailed information. |