These charts are provided by
Mother Jones. They show the incrediable amount of consolidation in the Iowa pork industry, but with little benefit to the state's overall economy. The number of hog farms, often small family run operations, has dropped since 1980. There were almost 50,000 hog farms in Iowa in 1982, now that number is down below 9,000. Yet the state is selling more hogs than ever. The number of hogs sold in Iowa has more than doubled in the period 1982-2007. And there are more factory farms than ever, increasing by a more than a factor of ten. These statistics mean family operations on traditional farms where other crops are also produced have sold out to the big four pork producers or adopted factory techniques themselves:
The economies of scale have driven down hog prices which is good news for the pork consumer, but the factory operations have also driven down local economies besides creating a host of
serious environmental problems. People living within smelling distance of a fetid factory farm have
higher blood pressure Factory farms buy a third fewer goods from local business per hog than small, family farms. Wages for meat packers have also dropped dramatically from over $50,000 per year in 1982 to just over $30,000 in 2007.
All is not well down on the Iowa farm and old McDonald has been replaced by faceless corporations that do most of their procurement out of the state. Factory farming is not bringing riches to Iowans in return for the
environmental degradation of their state.
