Benchmark Magazine Article Archive

In the swine industry, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are important to monitor from a human resources perspective as well. The people of your pork production operation are essential to its success. Hiring the right people, then providing the necessary training, guidance, compensation and rewards enable your organization to grow and prosper. Performance management systems help confirm you are meeting objectives and recognize employee accomplishments.

If you’re a bit – or even a lot – confused about the new Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) rule that took effect Oct. 1, 2015, and the new feed and water antibiotic labels that will be phased in by December 2016, you are not alone. That said, the confusion can be lessened. Per Creighton Abrams: “When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.” The “elephant” in this case is the new VFD.

For Keith Schoettmer, the success of any pig-farming operation is based on four specific pillars of support. Herd health. Genetics. Buildings and Environment. People and Pig Care. “It’s like a four-legged stool,” explains America’s Pig Farmer of the Year for 2015. “All four legs are very important to success, be it on our farm, or any other farm.”

Veterinary Feed Directives (VFDs) will fundamentally shift and change how food is produced and will impact every level of production including feed mills, producers and the veterinarians that serve them. There are and will continue to be unknown costs associated with VFDs. Also, feed mills will more than likely be required to police the system.

Commercial swine production operates in an increasingly competitive global industry with a wide range of regional challenges, each with their unique characteristics and underlying competitive positioning. However, the primary driving factors of sustainable, cost efficient pork production remain highly consistent across the globe. Identifying appropriate KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that allow monitoring of success and identification of opportunities in a real-time and efficient manner is a critical component to building a culture of continual improvement and high performance. These KPI can take on many forms, from leading to lagging indicators to those that help visualize input, output and financial results.

Business owners today are becoming increasingly tech-savvy, using computers not only for deskwork, but also for complex field tasks and mobile data collection — and pork producers are no exception. Farm owners who use advanced technology in their operations expect to hire workers who are prepared to use these tools in their daily tasks, without the need for extensive training. Fortuitously, most of today’s agriculture students have used computers daily for their entire lives, and they expect to use productivity-enhancing technology in their jobs to simplify tasks and improve their work performance.

To get a perspective of what Key Performance Indicators are important to pork producers in Russia, PigCHAMP representative Olga Miroshnikova asked several leading producers for their thoughts. Here are some of the responses.

Most commodities have plummeted in 2016, responding to a weaker macro-economic picture, but the one exception, oddly, seems to be hog futures, which have rung in a healthy 6% rise thus far making it the best performing commodity in the first quarter of 2016. There are 4 key forces or trends that remain a tailwind for hog futures in 2016, and are brewing up a perfect storm.

The implementation of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Guidance 213 will signal one of the most significant changes ever in the regulation of antibiotics in food animal production. These impacts are likely to vary depending on the type of producer or veterinary practice. However, the overall impact on public perception of food animal production will be dependent on the industry’s commitment to successfully implementing the changes outlined in the FDA guidance.

In June 2015 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), due to increased concerns and pressures surrounding the use of antimicrobials in livestock, implemented a new Veterinary Feed Directive1 (VFD). The result is that all use of antibiotics for the purpose of treating disease – prevention, control, and therapy – will soon require veterinary oversight. All drugs that the FDA has identified and ranked as important to human medicine (Guidance 152 Appendix A2) will require a VFD beginning on January 1, 2017. Additionally, through Guidance 2133, the FDA is transitioning food animals away from all growth promoter use of medically important antibiotics, and establishing veterinary oversight via prescription for use of therapeutic antibiotics in water.

Pork production today is ever-changing and has many stakeholders throughout the value chain. We can get so caught up sometimes with taking care of our direct duties that we may not do a good job of keeping abreast of those other segments that impact the pork industry. I take pride in having some key resources to increase my awareness of performance issues and opportunities in these segments. That’s one reason why I’ve been following PigCHAMP’s Benchmark data since 2000.

To get a completely different point of view of what factors are critical to the success of pork operations in parts of the world with very different challenges from what is seen in North America, Benchmark spoke to Kiddivong Sombuntham, Head of the Swine Division for Japfa Comfeed with swine operations in Vietnam and Natasha Ferguson, PigCHAMP technical consultant for South Africa.

If ever the old adage “There’s no time like the present” carried meaning, it is today. Pork producers need to start preparing for the Jan. 1, 2017, deadline, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will implement new regulations for antibiotic use on the farm.

We are now less than a year away from the implementation of new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations that will eliminate sub-therapeutic (growth promotion) use of antibiotics deemed medically important for human medicine, as well as increase veterinary oversight of antibiotics used for therapeutic purposes.

Efficient sow reproduction is fundamental to achieving a successful, sustainable and economically viable swine industry. Many economists have shown us that the swine industry in North America continues to improve on the number of pigs weaned per litter. Therefore, a key production indicator (KPI) used to assess the efficiency of sow performance is the number of pigs weaned per litter, per year, or per lifetime. The modern hyperprolific sow has a great potential to produce numerous quality piglets at weaning.