Benchmark Magazine Article Archive

The Bountiful Pig. When you think of pigs, what do you think of? Did you know that everyday pigs provide vital needs for humans? Pork products range from safe high-quality delicious sources of protein, lifesaving medical uses, and many other products that help improve the quality of our lives. No other animal provides such a wide range of products for society as pigs. Through new technologies and innovative research, new by-products from pigs continue to be developed every day.

The Belcampo Farm was started in 2012 and founded with the mission “to deliver meat you can feel good about”. Belcampo meat products are a quality protein source for people; Belcampo certifies humane treatment of its animals; and regenerative agriculture for the environment.

Back in February 2021, the PigCHAMP team had the pleasure of sitting down over Zoom with Joyce Hoppes from the Iowa Pork Producers Association (IPPA). As the Consumer Information Director, Joyce works closely with retailers, educators, and healthcare workers on the consumer side of programs and activities. Other than this past year, you can usually find her at events like the Iowa State Fair or putting programs together like Pass the Pork.

The swine industry has changed greatly over the past few decades. Efficiencies in pork production and the agriculture industry, have changed the way we look at what and where our food comes from. Consumer demand for increased animal welfare and safe pork products has driven the industry to improve production and quality standards.

At the beginning of 2020 most people started the year with a New Year’s resolution -- usually based on hopes of working towards improving their health, business, friendships, or a personal goal. Then COVID-19 hit, resolutions were replaced with other concerns such as business closures, many changes, and uncertainties.

Pigs and humans have remarkably similar brains and digestive tracts. This affords the pig great potential as a preclinical model for biomedical research. In particular, the neonatal piglet model provides a window into understanding how early-life nutrition influences neural development.

Total number of farms = 305

Total number of farms = 38

The opportunity to compare sow herds is always a humbling activity. On the one hand, we are presented with a large amount of data, especially at the individual sow level. In comparison, postweaning growing pig records have much less data.

Early 2021 witnessed a “perfect storm” brewing in the U.S. hog industry as a marketing whole (less supplies in 2021 at -3.4% vs. last year) due to higher diseases (PRRS/PEDV in Iowa/Minnesota), strong global demand (driven by China) and domestic demand (driven by U.S. stimulus cheques in 2020/21) , higher feed costs, and the pent-up pandemic-recovery demand has resulted in soaring U.S. pork cutout values and futures, which are higher year-on-year (Y/Y) by +90% and +56%, respectively.

In early March of 2020, what now feels like another lifetime ago, the University of Illinois Meat Science Laboratory was racing through a typical, fast-paced, spring semester. Graduate students were slaughtering and fabricating over 50 pigs over the course of a week to collect data for industry supported projects.

Unbeknownst to me, my life story with pigs came full circle in the early 2000s. I had always liked working with pigs, learning about them and teaching or training others about them. Performance-related indicators such as farrow rates, total born, and total wean pigs per sow were all very important to me.

As the world`s population grows rapidly and incomes rise, demand for animal protein and products is expected to increase by seventy percent. However, supplying such an upward demand while the number of farmers continually decrease is a problem which needs to be resolved so that ethical and economical constraints are kept to the forefront of the discussion on production practices.

In South Africa PigCHAMP is represented by Alzu Enterprises t/a Alzu pig genetics group in Middelburg. Despite the global pandemic in 2020, Alzu Enterprises was able to host its 9th annual charity mountain bike race, called the Alzu Tour de Farm.

The Canadian hog and pig farming industry is composed of many small, family owned farms, leading to fragmentation in the market with the biggest players being HyLife Foods, Maple Leaf Food, Progressive Pork Producers Co-Operative and Sollio Cooperative Group.

The hog and pig farming industry in the United States facilitates feeder pig farming, hog feedlots, hog and pig farms, farrow-to-finish operations and weaning pig operations, with primary outputs being market hogs, feeder pigs, cull stock and breeding stock.

Through the Looking Glass: Past~Present~Future. We know that knowledge of the past helps us today and leads us to be better in the future. Today, the swine industry is fighting a global battle after the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the prevention or rebuilding after African Swine Fever (ASF) and other swine diseases.

Over the years, there have been many changes on how swine operations obtain knowledge of their herd’s performance, as well as the resources used for production management. In the past, sow data was saved on input tablets, small pocket notebooks, and large devices that were carried in the barn.

In ancient times, the first marketing pieces were very likely to have been food related and painted on a wall, directing where travelers could go to get a good meal. In days gone by, marketing was by one-way communication and targeted, getting a specific message out to the audience. Today, more than ever, marketing includes two-way communication on multiple media platforms, exposing messages to a large variety of global consumers.

It’s a new scenario for pig production because of two major factors, African Swine Fever (ASF) and Covid-19. Market prices are volatile, knowing how global prices will evolve will not be easy to predict.