IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 1
programs were put in place that promoted the industrialization of animal
agriculture. 11,12 These included: investment tax credits for confinement
building technology; rapid depreciation on confinement facilities; writeoffs
of capital investments as cash expenses; inclusion of closely held
corporations in the definition of family farms eligible to use cash
accounting; capital gains exemptions on sales of breeding stock; price
support programs that made land more profitable for growing crops than
for raising animals and reinforced the move to intensive confinement; and
crop deficiency payments that served as "de facto" subsidies from
taxpayers to livestock farmers by keeping grain (feed) prices low, further
encouraging expansion.
Perhaps as important, there seemed to be a philosophical premise
underlying farm programs which has persisted to the present: that aid to
farmers, in the name of preserving family farms, should be awarded on the
basis of production volume rather than income, stewardship of natural
resources, or some other, desirable social goal. This philosophy had the
effect of channeling aid into the hands of the highest volume farmers. 13
During the years 1975 to 1980, in particular, major expansion occurred in
the hog industry. 14 Two-thirds of the total building capacity was in capital
intensive structures specialized to hog production. Specialization
permitted greater separation of ownership, management, and labor.
Government policies and the new mass production technologies were
attracting new investors to hog farming. More than half of U.S. farms
selling 5,000 or more hogs in 1978 had not been in hog production in
1975; some had not been in the business of farming at all in 1975. 15 While
hog farms were becoming fewer in number and more specialized, hog
output increased by 40% between 1975 and 1980.
The years between 1980 and 1988 saw further declines in farm numbers.
By 1988, only 326,000 U.S. farms had hogs. While hog farm numbers
were declining, the total number of hogs produced was increasing due to
larger sow herds, more litters born per sow in a year, and more pigs
produced per litter on larger farms. Since 1992, hog farm numbers have
increased only in the size category of 2,000 hogs or more. 16 By 1999,
there were 98,460 U.S. farm selling hogs.
Figures 1 and 2 show changes in the annual U.S. pig crop and in the
number of U.S. farms with hogs between 1983 and 1999.
Figure 1. U.S. Annual Pig Crop 1983-1999. (Source: U.S. Department of
Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)).
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