Here at KnowledgeVentures, the economics of variation has been the cornerstone of our work for many years. While variation has many negative impacts, one of the most economically significant is found in weight at finishing. When a pig falls outside the acceptable range of weight and lean set by the packer matrix, it receives a penalty to the base price, often called sort loss. By reducing variation at finishing, sort loss is reduced, marketing improved and profits get a much-needed boost.
To be most effective at reducing variation, it’s important to consider its causes. Outside of natural genetic variation, the biggest causes are disease, nutrition and human interference, usually in that order. If we can begin to manage these causes before placement in finishing, we’ll increase the positive impact at marketing.
Start Early
Managing these factors early limits the growth of subpopulations, which are smaller groups within the larger population with distinct performance metrics. The reality, which we all know but is hidden under the averages we see on performance monitors, is that when disease enters the barn not every animal gets sick. Those that do are each impacted differently. The same goes for feed – each animal has a unique response to a ration, meaning there are as many different feed efficiencies as there are pigs.
While current technology limits the monitoring of subpopulations in real time, we can certainly identify them using statistical techniques at finishing and identify the causes of their formation. When this sort of analysis is done in conjunction with a packer matrix, it becomes a simple task to determine the value of limiting subpopulations and promoting homogeneity. This insight allows us to make corrections for future groups and remedy any systematic problems and do so with the knowledge of cost-benefit.
Tremendous Opportunity Awaits
Subpopulation analysis represents a tremendous research opportunity, not just for academic institutions (a hint to any grad students reading this), but for farms and other commercial interests within the industry. Better understanding of subpopulations will allow us to move from one-size-fits-all interventions to more targeted and precise interventions yielding the greatest benefits.
We have seen this happen in crop agriculture, where it’s now common practice to apply varied treatments based on what the need for the subpopulation of a field might be. Additionally, when larger farrow to finish farms better understand their subpopulations, modifications to the flows of piglets from breeding sites to finishing can be made so that low variation finishing groups can be assembled.
For smaller farms that are either just breeding or finishing, new contracts could be negotiated that move away from typical grading practices toward multiple tiers built around the subpopulations being produced. This would be a win-win situation where breeding farms are rewarded for producing pigs that will be less variable at finishing, and the finishing farm reaps the benefits at marketing.
Once we, as an industry, better understand our subpopulations and move towards precision interventions early in the pigs’ lives, we will unlock an untold number of hidden pockets of value.
Read more:
2024: The Beginning of Something Extraordinary
What Will Drive Big Change and Profitability in the Future of the Pork Industry?
