Gone are the days where a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper will do. Recipes referencing the measurements of our grandparents are no longer accurate enough in today’s environment, explains Marguerite Tan, director of environmental programs at the National Pork Board. To stay feasible and relevant, measurements must be more accountable.
Just as a “little of this and a little of that” isn’t good enough for recipes today, nor is it enough for pork producers to simply fall back on anecdotal claims about how they are producing pigs more efficiently and sustainably, Tan says.
“Consumers and the supply chain want real numbers as proof of what we are doing in animal agriculture,” Tan says. “Now we are finding ourselves in this transition period where we’re changing over to more precise measurements and data to give consumers and the supply chain what they want. This is about measuring our progress and tracking what we are actually doing.”
Protecting Producers’ Freedom to Operate
Producers have always been fantastic at doing more with less, she says. Not only do they continually seek innovative ways to save time and money, but they value using research-backed data to make needed change.
“The challenge is we can’t manage what we don’t measure,” Tan points out. “Accurate measurements provide us tools to manage our facilities, save us money, be more efficient and help us identify those opportunities for improvement.”
When it comes to raising pork more sustainably and efficiently, one of the biggest questions that needs to be answered is fairly simple: Is the improvement worth the investment of that producer’s time, labor and money to implement?
“Sometimes we might look at some of these improvements at the farm level and decide it’s really not worth it. It’s not going to gain me anything to save $0.03 per month,” Tan says. “But other improvements may cause us to say, ‘Yeah, it’s absolutely worth the time, energy and money to implement that improvement.’”
Taking measurements and looking at the resulting trend lines can help producers find ways to raise pork more efficiently. Tan adds mitigating environmental impacts is a crucial element in protecting pork producers’ freedom to operate.
Start the Process Now
Documentation can be very simple, she says. Hopefully, it will include information that producers already measure and track. The information is aggregated into Pork Cares Farm Impact Reports, funded by Checkoff dollars. These reports provide a snapshot of on-farm sustainability practices presented in a concise professional report. Learn more about the reports here.
“The state and national reports, built from blinded and aggregated data from real producers on their individual farms, is a great vehicle to share accurate data measurements with customers as proof of what we’re doing inside of the farms,” Tan says. “The reports highlight the commitment producers have to the environment and sustainability. If we don’t provide that accurate, blinded and aggregated data from real farms, data will come from other sources to be used instead.”
And Tan says there’s a good chance that this data will not be accurate or reflect the continuous improvement pig farmers have worked so hard to gain over the past 30 to 50 years.
“It’s really important producers are able to measure that data and track that data, not only for the management of their facilities and continuous improvement of their facilities, but also for the swine industry, so we can continue to operate,” Tan says.
Where Do You Start?
How can producers start moving the needle to make progress in their operation? Tan says it starts by thinking about preventative maintenance in barns.
1. Accurate records
“When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?” she asks. “Likely you won’t remember unless you’ve had a recent visit to the emergency room, and they gave you a tetanus shot because you were told you needed one or you happened to write it down. Preventative maintenance items in our barns are very similar to preventative medicine in humans, like that tetanus shot.”
Maintaining a schedule with records of what was done when and making sure the schedule is maintained is a key place to start.
2. Fan maintenance
Another example of preventative practices is fan maintenance. Poor or inadequate fan maintenance can decrease overall airflow by those fans, as well as the efficiency of the motors.
“It can decrease efficiency by more than 40%, which significantly increases our energy costs with our fan motors,” Tan says. “We need to make sure we are cleaning the dust off of them, we’re adjusting our pulleys, we’re checking those motor temperatures so they’re actually running efficiently and correcting those items as we have problems.”
3. Electricity
A big part of this preventative maintenance is measuring electric use. This will indicate if something is going on, not necessarily with the fans, but within the barn.
“Maybe there’s a newer technology that’s more efficient with this electric use?” she says. “But, if we’re not measuring or tracking that electricity, we might not notice that opportunity.”
4. Propane and natural gas
If propane use seems high for a particular month, it might be as simple as what’s happening in the barn. Maybe you have smaller pigs in the barn that don’t generate as much natural heat. Maybe it’s just colder outside. However, it also might mean there is a gas leak somewhere, or something odd is going on with the barn ventilation,” Tan says.
Check to see if you have an inlet stuck open, or if you have holey curtains that need replaced.
“I know none of this stuff is easy,” she says. “It takes a lot of time and energy to implement for us to be able to actually measure and keep track of all of these different records.”
Producers can’t control the cost of energy, but Tan advises them to look at things they can do to help control how much they are spending on energy or how much energy they are actually using. Performing preventative maintenance and identifying energy-saving opportunities can make a big difference to a producer’s bottom line.
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