...A
quick look at one of the most vulnerable chains, pork, spotlights its
weak9est links and shows how it can be shortened—and backstopped—by more
local production.
According
to Successful Farming (SF) magazine’s late 2019 Pork Powerhouses®, 40
national and international companies now own 4,290,700 sows, or mama
hogs, in the U.S. Those 40 operations, in fact, own two out of every
three sows in America today, reported SF. Equally remarkable, if each of
those sows, on average, delivers 25 baby pigs this year (intensely
managed sows will “farrow” 30-plus piglets per year), these 40
powerhouses will produce and control 107.5 million hogs.
That,
too, is roughly two-thirds of the 150 million or so hogs that will be
born, raised, and slaughtered in the U.S. this year. Interestingly, the
other one-third of the hogs the Fab 40 don’t have a direct hand in
nearly equals the amount of pork exported by the U.S. to the rest of the
world.
That
effectively means the entire domestic pork market is controlled by 40
companies, 15 of which are either owned outright or integrated with a
global meatpacker. It also means that when American taxpayers give their
money to “livestock farmers” during this ongoing pandemic, most will go
to a handful of industrial meatpackers who, in fact, are today’s “hog
farmers.”
But
that’s not the only price Americans will pay. Last week, our highly
efficient, industrialized system snapped after the virus landed in its
workplace. The collapse was so concerning the White House stepped in
with its muscle and our money. Again. It was all so predictable.
Just
ask Mike Callicrate, a Kansas rancher who raises, slaughters, packages,
and sells his own beef and other farmers’ local lamb, poultry, pork,
and cheese through Ranch Foods Direct, his company. He foresaw the rise
of industrial meatpackers and predicted the nation would pay for its
growing, reckless devotion to cheap, unhealthy industrial food.
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