A new idea has been brewing in Chet Mogler’s mind at Pig Hill Farms in northwest Iowa.
“2023 was a really rough year,” Mogler says. “It made us do a gut check. What are we in this business for? Where do we need to trim things up? What can we do to get better?”
He’s quick to point out that bigger wasn’t better in 2023. It just meant bigger losses.
“Growth does not always mean getting bigger – it might mean diversification, it might mean professionalizing or doing things better,” Mogler says.
One of the areas Pig Hill Farm is seeking to improve right now is biosecurity.
“Biosecurity is always top of mind around here,” Mogler says. “Disease can take you out. To not be focused on it is foolish.”
Mogler thinks about biosecurity in three buckets: local disease risk, whatever he’s putting up with on his own farm and foreign animal disease. After participating in a foreign animal disease tabletop exercise last summer, he walked away more scared than ever – but also more motivated than ever to make biosecurity protocols even stronger in their operation.
Don’t Ignore Reality
“What I learned at that tabletop blew my mind,” Mogler says. “If you have a 2,400 head finisher that’s market ready, and you have to euthanize and compost those animals on site, it will take about 30 semi loads of carbon to properly compost that to USDA specs for qualification for indemnity.”
That number stunned Mogler.
“Around here, where we have 2,400s all over the place,” Mogler says. “When they say carbon source, it has to be a good, dense carbon. Tree chips are best.”
Depopulating a hog barn is very different than depopulating a barn of birds. Unlike pig manure, bird litter can be composted with the carcasses.
“What are we going to do with a half a million to a million gallons of contaminated manure?” Mogler asks. “How do we decontaminate the sites afterwards?”
Even though African swine fever (ASF) is not in the U.S. now, the risks are all around. For example, Mogler says a couple growers vacationed in the Dominican Republic - where ASF is actively present - last year.
“I don’t know that everyone truly appreciates the risk at times. I’m sure it didn’t even cross their mind. However, if there’s an option to avoid those risks, let’s do it.,” he says.“Someone vacations in the Dominican, comes back, goes into their barn too soon or to a county fair where there’s pigs, and well that’s it.”
It’s Time to Reward Doing Things Right
Another area of growth happening at Pig Hill Farm is incentivizing good work.
Ten years ago at a national pig industry conference, Mogler heard a producer present on the bell-shaped curve of their contract growers, noting the difference between top 10% and bottom 10% growers.
“It was a $15-per-head difference in cost of production between those growers,” he says. “If you turn that barn three times a year or two and a half times a year, that’s $40 a pig space. That’s about what we pay for rent in the industry. So, you can take your worst guys and pay them zero, and you can take your best guys and you can’t pay them enough yet. Everybody gets paid a couple bucks either side of $40.”
That has bothered Mogler ever since.
“It’s not fair to the people who are doing what they should do and busting their butt and doing what’s right,” he adds. “And it’s not fair to the people who are not. What they do every day, the time investment they put in and the detail and attention they pay as they’re out there every day is what affects the bottom line of our business.”
For 10 years, Mogler has been stewing on this. And recently, he’s developed an incentive-based program for their growers.
“It’s very much in its infancy, but it’s like a pay-for-play. We are incentivizing them and adjusting their compensation – with the goal not to pay people less, but to pay people more for doing better,” he says.
They have set up comprehensive biosecurity assessments and pre-fill assessments that all factor into a score, along with their closeout score and supervisor visits that factor into a score that puts a baseline pay together for them.
“Where the rubber meets the road is growers can look at this matrix and see what happens when they take action to improve biosecurity on their farm,” Mogler explains. “For example, they may see if they put in a shower and a laundry area in their barn, they will get paid $2 a pig space more because $1.50 of it is from just taking the action and the chances of increasing performance because of lower biosecurity risk.”
All of a sudden, growers have very actionable items in front of them to change their compensation rate.
“The challenge to this is you’ve got to do this for every site. There’s a lot of infrastructure between the scoreboarding process and calculating monthly rents or however often you want to adjust it, that there has to be foundational data management in place,” Mogler says.
That’s been the biggest thing to tackle. Everything from what the supervisors do to what the barn operators know will require great transparency.
“It’s fair. It makes sense,” Mogler says. “The level of engagement I’ve had because of it, has been a really big deal. We are excited to roll it out, but recognize we are in the infancy of this program.”
More Than One Path
Through initiatives like these grower incentives, Mogler is committed to finding unique ways to grow his operation other than just in size.
“I believe professionalizing and improving is key to keeping this operation together,” he says.
As he looks to the next generation of pork producers in their own operation and beyond, he encourages them to adopt a growth mindset.
“I’ve learned one of the best ways you can improve your own farm is to learn from others,” Mogler says. “Sit down with other pork producers, get to know them, hear their story. You will learn something from them and they might learn something from you.”
You can listen to more of Mogler’s story on The PORK Podcast on YouTube or follow The PORK Podcast anywhere podcasts are found.
