Family Farming In America

n today's growing economy family farms are decreasing and factory farms are increasing. America was built upon family farms. Without family farms, American’s wouldn't know the values of Hard work, family traditions,respect,morals , and the men who built america. Factory farms are slowly taking control of everything, they control their own prices because they are involved in buying the sows, raising the pigs, and processing the meat. Factory farms are bad for family farms because they take all the profit out of the market,they constantly get larger and larger,and they cut out the middleman. I have a family farm with 17 years of experience. Vertical Integration has been going on forever. In today's society the large farms continue to get
In today's society it's either go big or go home. Factory farms are able to make more profit in vertical integration because they own everything from wean to finish. They can raise more hogs than ever before for even lower prices. By being able to own everything there is no money being outsourced to other people to do a job that they can do themselves now. Large operations keep putting small operations out of business everyday because they can make it more profitable for themselves and less for smaller operations. They have taken all profit out of raising livestock on family farms and moved it to factory farm
Without factory farms we could not feed America's growing population. They can produce meat in large quantities for cheap prices. Family farms would not be able to produce enough meat. Packing plants butcher 16,600 hogs a day, 99,600 hogs a week, 5.2 million a year. Factory farms provide jobs for individuals that need work. Packing plants need hogs hauled from the farrowing house to the feeding barn and then from there to the packing plant. Packing plants need 16,600 hogs every 20 hours, 6 days a week. Most feeding barns hold 2500 head of hogs, and can only be hauled out 180 at a time. Every barn need 14 semi trailers to haul them all to the plant. Thats a lot of jobs in a big perspective, from gas station getting fuel, truckers hauling the hogs, feeders feeding the hogs, workers in the packing plants, then retailers selling the finished product. Factory farms provide many jobs to anyone that wants to work. I have personally experienced this because my family is into farming. We have been on the homestead since 1847 when we settled here. Back in the day everyone farmed, had livestock to make profit on, and would use it to feed their