The System:Hog Industry

[mikey]

Industrialized Production Spreads Across the Globe

This multisite system of production has existed along with the more traditional ones, in which farmers raised only a few hundred or a few thousand pigs for slaughter. But at the start of the new millennium, multisite production was rapidly taking over the industry. In Corn Belt hog-producing states, individual families that ran grain farms still fed hogs, but only in the second and third stages of multisite production. The families no longer owned the pigs. Instead, they raised them for large companies, much as local entrepreneurs run franchise outlets for fast-food chains. The pigs were owned, from birth through slaughter, by large companies, including packers. The parent animals in this system are complex proprietary mixtures of breeds owned by a handful of multinational companies. By the late 1990s, more than half of U.S. production was in some stage of this "vertical integration," meaning that each step in hog raising is owned or controlled by one company. The multisite pig production system was becoming global, existing not only in the United States and Britain, but also in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy, China, and France.

Many of these countries are also the top producers and consumers of pigs. China is the leader, producing 43.2 million metric tons of pork in 2002, more than half of the global production of 85.2 million tons. The European Union was a distant second, with 17.8 million tons. The United States ranked third, producing 8.7 million metric tons of pork. China's livestock practices supply the main reason the world eats much more pork than other meats. Of the world annual beef production of about fifty million tons, China raises only 5.8 million tons of beef.


Say my contract is with XYZ,they take delivery of the gilts for pork (fresh meat) and my barrows,culled sows and overweights for processed meats.This today is the common way unless you sell you hogs at auction (spot markets prices).Most commercial hog operations are under contract and specify what you raise for them.If you are an independant you sell your hog at auction or have your own customers to market your end product.
The Philippines is very different as both gilts and barrows are sold at the same time and I guess they go to the same packing house for fresh pork and the culled and overweights go to the processed meats factory.
I like the Philippine system better,simplier and the farmer has more control over his/her own stocks.