Nebraska hog model

New hog plan may help family farms

Published Friday

August 6, 2004

BY CHRIS CLAYTON, WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

 

LINCOLN - Rod Johnson asked a group of high school students, considered agriculture scholars, how many expected to return to the farm.

About one-third raised their hands. Even fewer seemed interested in raising hogs.

That isn't a good thing for Johnson, director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association.

After years of criticism for increasingly large hog operations, the association is promoting an old model of farming as a new way to develop more, smaller hog-finishing units in the state.

The "Nebraska model" is being pitched as a way to get more young people back on the farm, finishing hogs in addition to raising crops. It's also an answer to critics of consolidation and odorous hog confinements.

The model proposes that each farmer add a 1,000-head finishing unit to a crop operation. That's the economic equivalent of adding 640 acres of irrigated cash-rent farmland.

The model was created to show families how to bring sons or daughters into farming without needing more land.

Columbus farmer Bill Luckey added a 2,000-head finishing unit to bring his son Lucas back to the farm. The family's 480 acres of cropland isn't enough to support the facility, so they also are finishing hogs under contract with another farmer.

"This was a way we could, without adding more ground, create more income," Luckey said.

Lucas Luckey is more interested in cattle than hogs, but Bill Luckey also wants to make sure there are opportunities for his younger sons, Kyle and Michael, if they choose to farm as well.

"I don't want them to have the feeling that since Lucas has come back, they have got to go do something else," Bill Luckey said.

The hogs also provide nutrient-rich manure for the crops. The labor isn't as intensive as one might think, Luckey said, until the unit has to be cleaned. Strong hog prices this summer also have made a difference.

"A guy can make up for lost ground and get ahead for a while," he said.

Nebraska ranks sixth nationally in pork production but finishes only enough hogs to fill 78 percent of the slaughter capacity at the state's three large hog-processing facilities, in Crete, Fremont and Madison.

"So there is access to a market," Johnson said.

Nebraska has more sows producing pigs than there are places to feed them. So Nebraska sends pigs out of state to grow and then brings them back to slaughter and process.

Pigs are going primarily to farmers in Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and Minnesota, but also as far away as California.

Though financial situations differ, the model starts with the notion that a beginning farmer may need 640 acres of rented irrigated land to succeed financially. But that farmer can generate a similar amount of income by custom-finishing hogs in a pair of 1,000-unit facilities or owning a single 1,000-unit facility with his own hogs.

The Nebraska Pork Producers Association and University of Nebraska researchers have been working on the Nebraska model for about two years.

The model also has its roots in Iowa's pork industry, said Al Prosch, director of Pork Central at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Iowa is the nation's top pork-producing state, mostly because so many grain farmers also raise hogs.

"The whole point here is, it gives more options for the traditional row-crop farmer," Prosch said. "The premise of the Nebraska model is 'Let's feed the Nebraska pigs in Nebraska.'"

The environmental consequences are also better if hogs are spread across much of the state rather than concentrated, Prosch said. "Spreading the ownership over more Nebraska farms is part of the goal here," he said. "The point is to get this back to more family farm ownership."

Rural backlash remains a problem. This month residents in Seward County are fighting a 12,000-head finishing unit proposed near Milford.

While most complaints about hog facilities may come from rural residents who don't farm, studies indicate that even older farmers are less supportive of animal agriculture, especially hogs, than they used to be.

"Most of those guys began with livestock, particularly hogs," said Mike Brumm, a pork specialist at the NU Haskell Research Lab in Concord. "But now they are resistant to it. We still have to face the issue of acceptance of pigs."

A single 1,000-head unit meshes with changing compliance and environmental regulations in the state. A single or paired unit might not cause the fuss of a larger operation.

Hog-finishing also may be encouraged by today's prices, over $76.50 per 100 pounds compared with an average of $19.49 in 1998. Exports also are setting record highs, partly because of the shutoff of U.S. beef and poultry exports out of concern about disease.

"We're kind of hoping this is an opportune time people will reconsider the row-crop strategy," Prosch said.

Johnson thinks younger farmers will be willing to look at hogs as an option because of the growing debate in Washington and overseas over the legitimacy of U.S. farm subsidies. Farmers will need more options for income if free-trade agreements demand more subsidy controls nationally.

"Logic tells you they will not continue at the levels they have been at," Johnson said.

Hogs also might become a more attractive option for farmers in areas of Nebraska where water controls are becoming more common. Farmers in areas such as the Republican River basin could turn back to hogs to make up for lost income from irrigated acres.

"It's a good thought," Brumm said.

Two thousand hogs consume about 237,000 gallons of water a year, the equivalent of less than 9 inches of irrigation water on a single acre of corn.

"One acre of irrigation water rights could meet any hog barn needs . . . and significantly change your cash flow," Brumm said.

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