Pigging Out.

• Author: THOMPSON, NANCY
• Position: Pork farmers

Huge pork producers devour small farmers

Linus Solberg's hogs are giving birth again this spring. Purebred hogs have been the mainstay of his farm near Cylinder, Iowa, every year since 1958. "I really like hogs," says Solberg. "Hogs were one of the reasons I decided to get into farming." This may be his last springtime farrowing, though. Solberg and thousands of other family farmers are beset by the lowest pork prices in history. "This is devastating," he says. "Everybody is getting out of the hog business."

That's true of Arnold and Marlene Schroder from Palmyra, Nebraska. Arnold, now sixty, has raised hogs for a living since he was fourteen, when his father died and left the family farm to him. The Schroders expanded their operation in the mid-1980s. Now they wish they hadn't. "We made it through the farm crisis of the 1980s," says Marlene, "but we won't make it through the 1990s." They'll be selling their hogs and some farmland this year, hoping at least to keep the home where the Schroder family has lived for 100 years.

Traditionally considered the "mortgage burner" of agriculture, raising hogs once provided young people an inexpensive way to start farming, and family farmers used pork production to diversify income, add value to crops, and fertilize fields. In the 1950s, nearly 60 percent of farmers kept hogs. Today, though, pork production is more likely to lead to bankruptcy, and only 5 percent of the nation's farmers still raise hogs. The industry is dominated by a few huge companies, which have so driven down the market price for pork that small hog farming is almost impossible.

More hogs were produced in 1998 than in any other year in history, creating an oversupply that even growing demand couldn't offset. In December, some producers received just seven cents per pound--meaning they got about $18 for a hog that cost about $100 to raise.

Many family farmers gave hogs away to friends or charity rather than pay for more feed or transportation to a meatpacker. By April, prices had increased to around 25 cents per pound, but most producers were still losing $40 on every hog sold.

The small farmers may be leaving in droves, but not everyone in the pork industry is experiencing financial trouble. Megaproducers keep expanding and pushing prices downward. Their assembly line technology produces hogs like widgets. The primary goal of these megaproducers is to make money, and they're not ashamed to admit it. "America is made out of...