An Alternative to Factory Hog Fams

Thursday I attended a session here at the conference about a university course in which students learned to directly market hogs they were raising to the community around their university. Learning about the students and the marketing process they went through was a bit interesting... but hearing how they raised the hogs was FASCINATING.

Pigs' Move To Factory Farms
You're probably familiar of the general idea of factory farms, a.k.a. concentrated animal feeding operations. Unlike other animals (like chickens), hogs were still pretty frequently raised on family farms until somewhat recently. A different breed of pigs - Republicans - were responsible.

In 2005, almost 80% of all hog operations were factory farms. That number was below 50% in 1995. Small and midsized operations still produced the majority of hogs then. To put that in more concrete terms, today over 50% of hogs live in facilities holding 5000+ animals. In 1996, only a third did.

What happened? In 1996, Congress passed the "Freedom to Farm" Act (also known as the Freedom to Fail Act). A report from researchers at Tufts University found that from 1997-2005, hog feed prices dropped to 26% below the cost of production as a result of that act. The pork market's top hog, Smithfield, who controls nearly 30% of the U.S. pork market, saved an estimated $2.54 billion dollars on feed during that time period.

A company like Smithfield raises hogs in enormous confinement facilities, and one of these can produce an amount of manure equivalent to the amount produced by all of the people Manhattan. This manure goes into liquidy, smelly lagoons and has generated bacteria responsible for enormous fish kills.

One note here: Hillary named Joy Philippi, the former president of a the National Pork Producers Council, as co-chair of Rural Americans for Hillary. The National Pork Producers Council is the main trade group for hog factory farms.

The Alternative: Hoophouse Hog Production
The students did not raise their pigs this way. They used a method pioneered in Sweden, where factory farms aren't permitted. The university didn't necessarily adopt this method out of a love for sustainability - a hoophouse costs about 1/3 of what a confinement facility costs to build. In their case, $15,000.

A typical hoophouse is 32 feet wide and 72 feet long and can hold up to 160 full size hogs. It has a dirt floor, covered by a bedding material of some sort (like cornstalks). On the ground, there are walls keeping the pigs in, but above those there are circular supports creating a high ceiling. The circular supports are covered by they are open at both ends except on the coldest days. At the top of the walls, there is a 6 inch space allowing air in, where it can circulate and exit out the open ends of the structure.

As the pigs begin to fill up the space with manure, you add a new bale of bedding material. You can just stick it in the middle of the hoophouse and the pigs will have fun tearing it apart and spreading it around. Ultimately this bedding gets about 3 feet high.

The pigs can root around in this bedding material (in fact, they would root their ways all the way out of the hoophouse if you don't add enough bedding material). As rooting is a natural pig behavior (one that they cannot do in confinement facilities), this makes them VERY happy. It also ensures the bedding material and manure are about half composted by the time the pigs are full grown.

Hoophouses are also energy efficient. The composting bedding in the bottom keeps it warm even in chilly weather so they require no heating. They also require no mechanical ventilation. Better yet? Reduced odor.

For the pigs, they can engage in natural social behaviors. When the pigs are small, they say you might look in on a cold day and see no pigs at all. They all burrow down into the warm bedding. Shake their food trough a little bit and you'll see little pig heads pop up all over the place.

Such happy, healthy pigs do not require near as much antibiotics as confined ones because they are not so stressed. The pigs are naturally gregarious (so much so that they'll all approach you if you walk up to them and they'll literally eat a pair of rubber boots off your shoes). They also adapt better to new situations, so it's not nearly as hard to get them into a trailer when you need to. And, there's decreased mortality among your pigs.

The final benefit comes from the manure. The speaker noted that he made $14,000 from his composted manure whereas a neighbor with a confinement operation spent $10,000 to have his liquid manure drained from a lagoon and spread on a field.

All in all, I can't imagine why anyone would NOT raise pigs this way. The speaker noted that you might also let the pigs go outdoors some (as some people do) but he personally didn't see what they could do outside that they couldn't do in a hoophouse, except for get sunburned. But whether or not you let your hoophouse hogs outside, if a hoophouse option exists then why on earth does anyone still keep pigs in confinement operations??