Innovation on the farm is sometimes a producer’s own choice, and sometimes it’s a necessity precipitated by government regulations or practices imposed by a supplier or customers. Either way, there are essential components of your swine operation you should regularly review for opportunities to innovate and improve — particularly biosecurity, supply chain response and labor force.
Livestock producers may not be big on change, but they are innovators who want to improve on their facilities, processes and methods to grow a more efficient pig and create a better environment for their animals. Begin by asking yourself: What is the guiding principle of my business? For most swine producers, the answer is along the lines of “we breed the best sows to the best boars to result in the most marketable pigs.” Your goal is to remain successful, which you do by embracing the guiding principle(s) that earned you success in the first place, and innovating to preserve that.
Several years ago, meatpackers started requiring swine producers to obtain Pork Checkoff PQA (Pork Quality Assurance) site assessments in order to continue selling pigs to them for processing. Those producers who did not wish to comply eventually found themselves outside the main supply chain and, most likely, out of business. This is one example of needing to change to adapt to a supply-chain evolution in the industry; another might be a change in processor requirements for antibiotics usage, or auditing programs.
As your industry supply chain evolves, you will want to innovate to stay in it, at least at “watershed moments” like the PQA requirement cited above. Another might be legal changes such as California’s Proposition 12 law is already bringing to sow barns across the country.
But you also undoubtedly have ideas that are more voluntary or unrelated to such requirements. When your operation is running smoothly and income is good is a great opportunity to carve out time to attend conferences (such as Carthage Veterinary Service’s Annual Swine Conference) and read journals to learn about new practices, invest in a research project pertinent to your interests or test a new feed additive in your nursery. By using “good” times to innovate and find out what works and what does not, you will be able to better weather the “bad” times with confidence that you have kept your operation as up-to-date as possible.
Another area that benefits from innovation is use of on-farm workers. Right now the pig industry has the most educated, knowledgeable and engaged agricultural workforce that I’ve seen in my lifetime. As an industry we have experienced huge strides in refinement and use of the federal TN nonimmigrant work visa to be able to employ degreed professionals from Mexico and Canada on swine farms.
In fact, there are producers who employ Spanish-speaking visa holders who may not realize how formally educated these workers are because the producers don’t know Spanish — and as a result, are not making the best use of employee talents on-farm to diagnose, examine and treat animals, for instance. This matters because probably a good 80% of on-farm labor time is spent looking for work to do, such as heat-checking hundreds of sows each day or walking through barns to assess animal condition. If we can find a way to automate these processes and identify the relatively few animals in need, we can cut down on labor costs and focus qualified employees instead on treating and caring for those animals, and solving those barn issues.
Biosecurity Fortification
Perhaps one of the biggest concerns for the modern swine producer is how to ensure on-farm biosecurity. First, accept that it is almost impossible for a single producer to completely eradicate pathogens on their own farm, let alone the world — the fact is, you alone cannot prevent foreign animal diseases (FADs) from entering the country. You can’t stand guard at all ports, airports and other entry points to keep out African swine fever, and you are already investing in federal authorities to do that as best they can, as well as in producer organizations dedicated to following these issues on national and international levels.
That said, you can improve your operation’s biosecurity to greatly reduce the possibility of any FADs as well as enteric pathogens infecting your herd. Focus your attention and spending on measures to shore up your defenses, whether it’s showers, checkpoints or other safeguards.
And speaking of spending — one problem you may run into when innovating is narrowing down a list of good ideas. You may only be able to afford one project, so how to choose? One way to do this is to build a spreadsheet, listing your ideas/innovations in rows, then ranking each in column categories such as return on investment, upfront capital, time needed to institute the change and more. Your rankings for each laid out this way may better assist with your choice.
Let’s say you want to cut down on the incidence of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome at your farm. On average you have experienced a PRRS outbreak among your herd every five years. You have been reading about various biosecurity practices and are trying to decide about building a truck wash. Make your spreadsheet and talk with experts who already have truck washes. What does it cost to construct? How often are they experiencing PRRS outbreaks? What other diseases does it cut down on among the herd? How many “clean” years will you need to recoup your investment? Moreover, which of these considerations is most important to you?
While there is still some “art” in making decisions about how to innovate swine operations, seeing your priorities in black-and-white and being able to plug numbers into that helps take some of the subjectivity out of it. This also helps you feel more confident about the choices you make. And if you do invest in something that you later determine didn’t work out, take time to “debrief” yourself after the fact. How could you have assessed the project differently at the beginning? How could you have executed it differently? Finally, what can you learn for your next innovative attempt?
Read More:
What Was Everyone Talking About at the 2023 Carthage Swine Conference?
Traceability is Not New: What it Means to the Pork Industry
Biosecurity Success Depends on a “Fine Line” Every Day
Making a List Doesn’t Make Your Farm Better; Execution Does
