Benchmark Magazine Article Archive

As an industry, we have realized the steady increase in sow mortality throughout the past decade and employed various efforts to respond to this critical production issue.

We’ve been using data to analyze past, current, and future hog producer productivity and profitability for some time.

Achieving 30+ pigs per sow per year was once a lofty goal, but today it is a fairly common achievement thanks to genetic improvements in litter size.

Imagine if in the same barn you had two groups with opposing genetic selection goals. The first group is modern genotype pigs with growth peaking late in finishing, and the second group of pigs are selected for earlier maturation.

Even as the world slogs through the pandemic of Covid-19, and the poultry sector sees surges of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus, the global pig industry in many countries has already faced the onslaught of the deadly African Swine Fever (ASF), as most of the western hemisphere prepares to keep it out.

Total number of farms = 292

Total number of farms = 28

The word “triggered” frequently has a negative meaning. Rather than focus on the downsides of being triggered - such as getting furiously angry by images we see on social media - it is time to look forward to being able to act in a positive way when we see a trigger in pig production data.