Agribusiness
Scaling Up: Raising hogs has gotten less expensive, especially for big farms
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Technological innovation, specialization, increased farm size and policy decisions have driven down the cost of production.
Agribusiness
Scaling Up: Use of production contracts has become the norm
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Production contracts lock farmers into guaranteed prices and lower financial risk, but put meat companies in control of some aspects of the operation.
CAFO
Scaling Up: The weighty impact of hog farming’s evolution?
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Since the 1990s, hog farms have gotten bigger, more specialized and more productive, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Research Service.
Graphic of the Week
GRAPHIC: Beef and pork producers are earning less while meat consumers are paying more than a year ago
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The situation might be due to fewer cows and hogs available available.
Graphic of the Week
GRAPHIC: Despite COVID-19 closings and slowdowns, pork production was higher in 2020 than the year before
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In four states with a large meatpacking footprint, production dropped 40% during outbreaks in the pandemic's first year. But overall production ended 2% higher than the year before.
Agribusiness
PAIN DENIED: At one of the country’s largest meatpacking plants, workers say their injuries were ignored
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Workers were told their injuries were “break-in pain,” soreness that comes from adjusting to life in a meatpacking plant. But some injuries were severe enough to warrant additional testing and treatment. In one case, a man was pushed to work with what turned out to be a fractured vertebrae.
Opinion
Opinion: USDA was duplicit in passing new pork inspection final rule
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Everybody kept telling us that USDA's new Swine Inspection Service was just dandy. Former USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue literally gushed and fawned over it:
Agribusiness
GRAPHIC: Design of South Dakota meatpacking plant contributed to high number of COVID-19 cases, CDC says
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In an August report, the CDC noted a difference between salaries employees in an office setting and the hourly workers on the production line.
#agalerts
#AgAlerts: Losing farms; giant pigs; recovery from wildfires
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Ford outlined how sustained low commodity prices now meant that the average farm income in 2017 was $43,000, and that the median farm income for 2018 was minus $1,500. This had pushed bankruptcies in the farm states across the Midwest, which sell half of U.S farm products, to the highest level in a decade.
JBS a big winner in USDA trade war relief contracts
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A Brazilian-owned meat processing company undercut its competition by more than $1 per pound to win nearly $78 million in pork contracts through a federal program launched to help American farmers offset the impact from an ongoing trade war.