Hog and Pig Farming

Industry Overview

The US hog and pig farming industry includes about 65,000 farms with combined annual revenue of $14 billion. Major companies include Smithfield Foods, Tyson Foods, JBS Swift, and Cargill. The industry is highly concentrated: over 90 percent of industry revenue is generated by just 10 percent of farms. Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods farm and process nearly half of the pork consumed in the US.

Hog farming involves six stages: breeding; gestation; birthing (known in the industry as farrowing); weaning; nursery; and grow finishing, where the hog reaches its ideal weight. While many large companies are often vertically integrated and ready the animal for consumption, this industry doesn't include slaughter.

Competitive Landscape

Demand is driven primarily by domestic and international trends in pork consumption. The profitability of individual companies depends on efficient operations and reducing the spread of disease. Large companies have advantages in vertically integrating operations from birthing to packaging and distribution. Small operations, typically family-owned farms, can compete effectively by specializing in a single stage of hog farming or raising humanely treated animals. Average annual revenue per worker on US farms is $175,000.

Hog and pig farms compete against other livestock, poultry, and fish operations.

Products, Operations & Technology

Major services include farrow-to-finish (45 percent of farms); growing pigs and hogs to finishing (25 percent); wean-to-finish (10 percent); and breeding (10 percent). Other services include farrow-to-wean and nursery operations.

The total US inventory of hogs and pigs (immature hogs weighing less than 125 pounds) is around 60 million head. Each year, the pork industry produces 20 billion pounds of pork, a number which has remained flat for decades in spite of US population gains. The number of US hog farms has fallen about 90 percent since the 1970s and 1980s, as highly efficient industrial operations displaced small, typically family-run farms. Of US hog farms, 70 percent manage fewer than 100 hogs, yet account for just 1 percent of total industry revenue. The average farm manages 900 pigs and hogs.

A female hog (gilt) is ready to reproduce at eight months. Reproduction begins with mating a gilt and a boar or through artificial insemination. Gestation takes about four months. A sow nurses her pigs for two to three weeks before the litter is weaned. Sows can be bred again mere weeks after weaning a litter. The typical sow produces around 15 piglets annually, yielding 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of live offspring a year.

Pigs weigh 10 to 20 pounds when weaned from a mother. Young pigs are gathered into a nursery with pigs the same size, where they eat a high-energy feed of soybean meal and corn. Pigs typically gain three pounds for every pound of feed. Farmers move feeder pigs out of the nursery when they reach 50 to 60 pounds, at around two to three months old. The final stage, growing (also known as finishing), is a four-month process of intense feeding until the hog reaches 240 to 270 pounds, the ideal slaughter weight. Each day, around 400,000 hogs are transferred to slaughterhouses. Of US hogs, 10 percent are kept for breeding, and around 5 to 10 percent are removed from inventory due to death or disease.

Although farrow-to-finish is the most common hog farm operation, almost as many farms specialize in one or two of the key stages, selling off and transferring pigs at the end of each stage.

Major inputs include corn, soybeans, water, and medications such as antibiotics. Feed inputs can be in short supply due to weather and competition from other non-feed harvests. Hog farmers typically enter into contracts with corn and soybean providers to guarantee plenty of feed for the anticipated number of pigs and hogs.

Technology plays a critical role in the health of the hog farming industry, particularly as large farms have become highly efficient and automated. Genetic standardization of hog semen improves the likelihood of a lean, high-yield marketing hog and can raise the number of pigs per litter. Antibiotics speed growth and limit infectious disease outbreaks. Technical innovations in hog waste and lagoon management can limit pollution spills and lower the risk of chemical exposure to farm workers, fish, and livestock.

There's more: Quick insight to make your sales call count.