We’re recapping 2022’s most important issues though a look back at the covers of Farm Journal’s PORK magazine.
Numbers Don’t Lie
Randy Spronk counts on data to articulate his sustainability efforts
Minnesota pig farmer Randy Spronk knows consumers have questions and doubts when it comes to modern pork production practices. He can quickly put those fears at ease when a consumer visits his farm for a tour and learns more about what they are doing on the farm.
“Many consumers just don’t know what we do,” Spronk says. “Anytime we explain what we’re doing here on the farm, it adds a comfort level, especially when they see what we’re doing with manure application and the science and technology we’re using.”
He has collected data for 30 years core sampling manure pits. Before he goes into a field and begins spreading manure, he knows exactly what the manure’s nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and percent solids are. Then, he programs the appropriate manure application rate in and the flow meter adjusts to apply that accurate amount on the field. Read the full story here.
Second Chances
How Tosh Farms is mentoring and equipping an unlikely source of employees in the sow barn
Drug addicts. Drunks. Disappointments. By the world’s standards, they looked like an unlikely group of employees to bring into a sow barn. But to Jimmy Tosh, owner of Tosh Farms in Henry, Tenn., they looked like a group of women who could use a second chance.
Full of questions and doubt, Tosh eventually said yes to Dana Bowden, now the West Regional Director for Hope Center Ministries, when she approached Tosh Farms to join forces with their long-term rehabilitation recovery program.
Bowden knows all too well the challenges the women in the program are facing. When she was 39 years old, she was arrested twice in one day for drug possession—prescription pain pills. She went to Hope Center Ministries in McEwen, Tenn., where she graduated eight months later from the program. She stayed with the ministry and worked her way up into a director role and helped start the Hope Center Ministries program in Paris, Tenn.
“I feel like God called me to use what I’ve been through for a higher purpose—to help other addicts get back on their feet and give them a second chance at life,” Bowden says. “I want them to know they are loved. Many of these women have been told their whole life that they are of little or no value.” Read the full story here.
Next-Gen Biosecurity
Feed is a risk you can no longer ignore
Although global risk of pathogen movement through feed is not a new topic in the U.S., around the globe there is less awareness of this pathway for disease to enter a swine farm. It wasn’t that long ago that porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus hit the U.S. in a fury.
This started a chain reaction among some of the greatest minds in the swine industry to find out not only how to stop this deadly virus, but also how to prevent it from coming into farms.
For Scott Dee, director of research for Pipestone, this became a pivotal moment in his career nearly eight years ago to the day when he discovered and proved that feed could be a vehicle for PED transmission to pigs. It marked the first-of-its-kind proof-of-concept work that had ever shown viruses could move in feed.
“That got me started,” Dee says. “Our group at Pipestone, as well as other university colleagues, began to replicate that work across multiple viruses. Now that’s been demonstrated with African swine fever (ASF), classical swine fever virus, pseudorabies virus, foot-and-mouth disease virus, Seneca virus and PRRS virus. Over time, we’ve built a very large set of data supporting the fact that feed is a vehicle for the transmission of diseases.” Read the full story here.
From the Inside Out
A farm girl’s miraculous journey from death to hope
Maddison Caldwell woke up on Dec. 19, 2019, with a plan for the ultimate act of finality. Death by her own hand.
For those who know Maddison, it’s difficult to understand why she attempted suicide. But a young girl with limited vision could see no other options.
“Nobody else planted that seed,” Maddison says. “It’s an illness. It happened all within my head. I could probably read about it and do research on it all day long, and I’ll still never understand why I made that choice.” Read the full story here.
Innovative Insight
How Bryan Humphreys will lead the pork industry forward
Some leaders are transformational. Others are strategic. Some are more traditional. Or at least that’s what the books say. National Pork Producers Council’s new CEO Bryan Humphreys admits he doesn’t fit under any of those categories of leaders. If he were to wrap up his approach to leadership, he’d call it innovative.
“I want to lead a team and an organization that is constantly looking at ways to improve things – the same way that our industry and producers do,” Humphreys says. “Some of that’s going to be transformational, some of that’s going to be strategic, some of that’s going to be traditional. But the best way I can wrap it up is that it will be innovative.”
Innovative leadership requires looking at the challenges ahead as opportunities that we can grow and improve through, he says. Pork producers are constantly faced with challenges that can be seen as opportunities to do something different, to look at a problem differently than you have before. It might be easier to just throw up their arms and walk away sometimes, but they don’t.
“Innovation is not always going to be pleasant, rarely is it going to be easy,” Humphreys adds. “But if it was going to be easy, somebody would have done it already.” Read the full story here.
Make Sense of the Data
Measure, compare and improve to help close the gap on your farm
“You don’t know what you don’t know if you’re not tracking it and if you’re not monitoring it,” says Brad Eckberg, business analyst at MetaFarms, Inc.
That’s one of the reasons why the U.S. pork industry benchmarking effort started up years ago, when National Pork Board’s (then) Animal Science Committee recognized a need to have publicly available information for producers and other interested stakeholders.
“We saw how other countries, particularly Denmark and Australia, had publicly available data for their producers,” explains Chris Hostetler, director of animal science of the National Pork Board. “We wanted to provide that same opportunity for U.S. pork producers to gauge their progress against the top 10%, the average and the bottom 10% of the industry, so they could see where they fall and which areas they’re doing well in and areas they need to focus more resources on.” Read the full story here.
The Industry’s New Voice
How Luke Bryan is busing myths about modern pig farming
For country music superstar and five-time Entertainer of the Year Luke Bryan, saying yes to be the face of the National Pork Board’s Mythbusting 2.0 campaign was an easy decision.
The country legend’s agricultural roots run deep, growing up on a farm in Georgia, where Bryan learned the value of hard work and sacrifice to put food on the table.
“I have so much respect for pig farmers,” Bryan says. “I know how hard they work – from sun-up to sundown, and it’s exciting to be a part of a project helping show consumers the real care that happens on pig farms around the country.” Read the full story here.
When All Hell Broke Loose
Nebraska pig farmer Kyle Baade opens up about his herd’s PRRS outbreak
She was nestled in the middle of the gestation barn, far away from the door. When she didn’t get up to eat that morning, Kyle Baade, owner of Baade Genetics in southeast Nebraska, didn’t think much of it. He thought the sow might have hurt a pad. The next day, three sows beside her didn’t get up to eat either, so he grabbed a thermometer. The four sows had temperatures ranging from 102 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Baade pulled blood and sent it in to be tested.
Meanwhile, all hell broke loose while he awaited the results.
Sows began aborting. Some even died. All Baade could think about – right, wrong or indifferent – was that he needed to move the sows from the gestation barn into the farrowing house.
“I thought if they did farrow early, and there was a chance the pigs were going to live, they sure weren’t going to do it in the gestation barn on slats. And, honestly, it was going to be easier to clean up on my part – to get deads out and clean up afterbirth,” Baade says.
But the effort didn’t help at all. Read the full story here.
