The Increased Productivity On U.S. Hog Farms

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, due to technological innovations and shifts to larger, more specialized hog farming operations, U.S. hog production has become more productive and less cost intensive, leading to lower hog prices overall.

An update on the U.S. hog industry shows that:

• Production has shifted to fewer and larger operations that specialize in a single phase of production and use production contracts; the number of farms with hogs dropped over 70% from more than 240,000 in 1992 to fewer than 70,000 in 2004, the U.S. hog inventory remained stable at about 60 million head.
• Substantial productivity gains, particularly for those operations that specialize in hog “finishing,” have resulted in reduced production costs and lower prices for hogs.
• Technology and increased farm size each explain about half the gains in productivity between 1992 and 2004.