Audits: The Farm Scorecard

When people think of farms, they usually think of just a few cows, chickens hogs, and goats munching on some grass in a pasture.  If they think of commercial farming, they oddly think about someone in a suit calling the shots for "cheaper at any cost" or "just get them on the truck, no matter how many shots you have to give them."  Rarely do they think of the farmer in overalls having to make business decisions, and follow defined quality standards.  

I received a letter in the mail this week, stating that the packer we sell our hogs to is switching its auditing program.  Along with the switch comes upwards of 200 pages of new paperwork to read through and implement in the coming months.  It isn't necessarily a bad change, but it is hard to make the adjustment from one system to another.

(Early Morning visiting the pigs.. 20 F outside 68 F inside.)

We have been conducting formal audits and checks on our farm for approximately 10 years.  This isn't to say we didn't do our own in house checks on a regular basis, but we never looked at those checks as a way to provide information to our customers.  Our current program has our managers do a weekly animal handling a care audit, and a yearly audit of each farm location done by myself.  I visit the farms much more often of course, but that  is my formal check of the facilities.  We then get 3rd party audits randomly from our packers, who come in to review our records, and make sure that we are doing what we claim to be doing.  Anytime we are out of line, we have 30 days to correct the problem with a written plan, and by implementation.  Sometimes this requires a re-audit.

On top of the audits, we do training for each person that works with pigs.  That includes all of the people working directly on the farm, plus our Amish contract barn owners and their families.  In all, 4 months out of my year is spent with a focus on training.  After the training is completed I visit locations weekly to make sure that things stay up to our standards.  Training focuses on recognition and treatment of illness, daily management practices, moving animals, how to identify and euthanize animals properly, and what animal abuse looks like.

It may not be perfect, but every training, every audit, and every farm visit gives us the opportunity to improve how we care for the animals.  Even though it makes me nervous to have an audit, it also shows that we are doing everything that we can to ensure the pigs are raised in a safe, and conscientious way.  

6 takeaways from the Great Lakes Crop Summit

(Sign Welcoming Farmers to the Great Lakes Crop Summit in Mt. Pleasant, MI)

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the Great Lakes Crop Summit.  It is nice to have such a well run cropping event so close to home.  After listening to a dozen or so speakers over the two days of sessions, I gathered up a few key points.

1. Export markets are there, and they are important.  If grain marketing at most farms in anything like it is on my farm, we just work with our local elevator.  That isn't the worst thing to do, but being aware of the international trade climate, and of the other ways you market grain (at a premium), can really help crop farmers manage their risk.

2. We have to be business smart to farm smart.   Farmers are always proud of the fact that we farm out of love for the land.  We also tend to be slow to change or adapt.  By treating downturn years the same way as high profit years, we are really shooting ourselves in the foot.

3. Soybeans have a lot of unrealized potential.  In Michigan, soybeans are more of a rotational crop, not the main money maker.  The Great Lakes Crop Summit made me realize that we are giving up potential on soybeans just because we don't make them a priority.  Some of the things we can do with soybeans don't even take more time or money, it's just applying effort at the right time instead of whenever its convenient around corn.

4. New to cover crops? Get Help! After listening to multiple sessions on cover crops and vertical tillage, my biggest takeaway is don't go it alone.  Many things in crop farming are trial and error, but investing $25-45/ acre, or thousands in new equipment isn't something you should do without working with someone who has experience.  This will save a lot of trouble down the road.

5. Customer connection is key.  This is true in all parts of business, and not always something we think of first in agriculture.  Traceability is something that is gaining importance everyday with consumers.  Delivering a product tailored to our clients will result in better relationships, and a healthy pocketbook.

6. Manage your risk.  What happens when you have an accident on the farm?   How prepared are you to handle it?  This isn't just about insurance, but also about knowing what you should be doing before the accidents happen to protect yourself.  Working with your lawyer, your accountant, and your insurance agent to best guard yourself against potential harms will leave you feeling confident and prepared to handle any situation.

Are you talking to a Farmer?

There are a lot of people talking about food, generating conversation, and taking interest in how we get from the farm to the table.  We talk about what it means for health, for the environment, for the economy.  We spend some time preaching, some defending, and some pointing the finger.  Often times I hear that "real farmers" like myself are good at what they do, but "cooperate farmers," a category I also fall under,  are the bad guys.  For most farmers throughout the country, we can easily fall into both categories.  People have a hard time identifying a farmer at times, and there are some dead giveaways to let you know that you have a farmer in your midst.  

1.  Plaid/checkered shirt.  It's a must.  The farmer's uniform.  Daily wear with jeans, all other occasions with a nice pair of khakis.  If you went to a farm show, 95% of the farmers would be in some form of this outfit.

2. Work boots.  We wear them everywhere.  Yes, there is a farm pair, a day pair, and a "dress-up" pair.  This designation is given by how long the boots have been out of the box.

3. Preoccupation with weather.  All farmers, be it crops, livestock, indoor or outside facilities, we are all worried about the weather.  Rain, wind, cold, or heat effect the growing cycle not only of the crops, but also of the animals.

4.  Family.  If you meet a farmer, you don't just see him or her.  You will also meet, the spouse, the children and/or parents.  We work together, we live together, we travel together.  We are close, and we are a team.

5.  Community Involvement.  For all the talk of farmers keeping their heads in the sand when it comes to issues, we spend a lot of time and money in our communities.  We vote.  We fund schools, post-prom trips, libraries, roads, and community activities.  We want to not only produce for our tables, but give back to those who put up with our manure hauling, road-blocking ways.  Community is something most farmers take pride in.

6. University Involvement.  Farmers are educated, probably more so than would be expected.  We have Alma Maters, which we will show unwavering support.  We value the resources they provide, working closely with extension agents to implement better management practices and technologies.  And we love to support the football, basketball, and livestock judging teams, among others at the university level.

Once you have identified your farmer, ask him a little about the land, or the livestock.  One who may have seemed quite or reserved just a minute ago will open up to share his life's work.  You will soon be able to tell that his pride is what's on your plate.

Farm Life: Winter Edition

Happy New Year!  I hope things are going well for all of you; resolutions still intact, or at least were broken for a worthy cause.  Winter on the farm can be a good time to get things back into shape, especially after a long harvest season, but like with our personal resolutions, a lot of things can get in the way.  Last week we experienced 2-3 feet of snowfall in one afternoon, with temperatures dropping to -20 degrees.  That type of weather gets in the way of doing any maintenance and upkeep- putting the whole farm into survival mode.

So what were we doing out on the farm, when everyone else was snowbound?  First we had to plow; farm driveways, areas around the feed bins, and even the roads.  It took a solid three days for the county plows to hit all of the roads, and the pigs needed to eat before that, so the farm tractors joined in to help.  We also would become a towing service for neighbors in the ditch, and even plowed out some of their driveways.  

Another job is bedding.  Bedding is pretty simple on a usual winter day:  we go out to the outside pig pens, open the gate, drive the straw wagon into the pen, take some bales of straw and put them in the hog houses (little huts that hold about 20 pigs each, for sleeping and to escape from the elements), drive back out of the gate and shut it.  With 3-4 foot snow drifts, even opening the gate becomes a big challenge, but the pigs need the new straw bedding most when the temperatures are so frigid.  

Other winter tasks include running the generator, and fixing heaters.  Two years ago, we decided to buy one of those stand-alone generators that starts with the push of a button- no more trying to hook up the tractor to run the generator!  That's really nice for those of us who aren't very good with a tractor, but we still need to make sure this new one works in the worst of conditions, because honestly, the power never goes out when it's 65 degrees and the sun is shining.  This time the generator fired right up, but everyone held their breath until they heard it fall into a natural rhythm.  If it doesn't work in the cold we have to figure out a way to get it to start, because next time we might not be so lucky.  As far as fixing the heaters go, they always seem to work best when you don't need them, so a lot of time went into fixing those during the last cold spell.

After being on the farm a few years, you begin to realize that there isn't a "busy season" and an "off season."  Livestock still needs to be tended, maintenance is a constant battle, and there is always more work than can be accomplished in a day.  Each time of year is filled with it's own challenges and rewards, but all part of the same bigger picture:  we strive to care for our land and our animals better this year than in year's past.     

Myth of the Modern Farmer

My sister and I talk about this one often.  You see a post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Yahoo News, etc.  promoting the hardworking farmer.  It makes us feel good to be in the industry and generally, it’s as far as you want to look.  Then scrolling down to the comments, you see the standard post that "those farmers are good, but real farmers don't work hard like that anymore, they just let the antibiotics/robots/pesticides do the work for them, and collect a big pay check."  

While the part about the big paycheck might be comical, those types of comments are a problem that we often run into.  As individual farmers, consumers see us as the hardworking person, who gets the job done.  Each one of us is the exception to the rule of "corporate farmers,” or "Big Ag."  However, our industry as a whole is viewed as corrupt, run by the executives of Monsanto in some high-rise office building.  How can we use technology in our farming, and not seem like the bad guy?

When talking to people, they will defend my right to farm the way they believe I do to the death.  They tell me that I am unique in that I don't abuse my animals, and use antibiotics responsibly.  If friends post a picture that demeans agriculture, they even will go out of their way to tell me that my farm is the exception.  My job at this point is to get them to realize, my farm isn't the exception, and it is the rule.

As Farmers, we take responsibility for providing good, quality food to our own families, neighbors, and larger communities.  We believe the food we produce is safe and we try to produce it in the best way that we can.  Part of that care is treating those who are sick, and euthanizing animals that are suffering. We house our animals inside to protect them from bad weather, and provide them a stable environment. We use technology to help us achieve a consistent product, something our consumers demand.

We don't have to look far to start to spread the message of responsible farming.  It's just not something we have had to do much in the past, so we don't always understand some of the questions.  By ignoring the myths that live around agriculture, we are letting them grow.  People who don't know will follow the popular opinion.  We are no longer just farmers, but also educators. 

Conservation Compromise

Last night I went out for dinner with my family and a good friend, Matt.  He isn't someone most farmers like to share dinner with, let alone call a friend, but I feel lucky to know him.  He works for Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) as a watershed conservationist.  Many farmers have a hard people who work in these positions, and we think that they are trying to take away land that we own, and that they don't understand the position of farmers.  In many cases this may be true, but Matt and I have some of the most thoughtful and exciting conversations about the future of agriculture, since with have different perspectives, but see the value in the land.

One point he brings to me about his job is that he is working towards getting people to realize the importance  of the wetlands.  The filter sediment, rejuvenates the soil, and generally make the water we have better.  They are things that whether or not we want to admit it, are good for the longevity of farming.  The point he brings to farmers is, that by protecting the wetlands, he is protecting the future value of the land for farming.  

With that in mind we talked about regulation.  As the conversation continued, I wondered whether we need a certain amount of regulation to protect us from our own best intentions.  For example, I want to plant the best crops I can, and have the best yields possible, year after year.  I would like to think that someday, my children will get to do the same thing if they so choose.  I know that I need the land to be in top condition each year, and that I need to do everything in my power to keep it that way for the next season.  In a way, some regulation on water quality, air quality, and soil conservation helps me to do that.  It makes me not only accountable to myself, but also my neighbors, cities, states, and nation.  It also allows me to record how well I am taking care of my land from year to year.  While many may find this to be a violation of rights, every time I drive downtown Detroit by the old automobile manufacturing plants, I am glad they can no longer dump sewer water straight into the river, or emit big clouds of black smoke.  They are more accountable for the waste they produce than the whole field of agriculture is; not that we are doing it wrong, but why not be accountable for what we do?  We need to have guiding principles to the care of our resources, and we need to make sure that we are part of the discussion when the principles are being made.

As we talked, Matt reminded me that with any adoption of environmental reform, we need to make sure our food production systems are protected by some kind of trade barrier. He doesn't believe that throwing farmers under the bus will do the country or the land any favors.  We need to maintain some type of self-sufficiency, and sometimes protecting our natural resources comes at a price.  However, once we have lost them, natural resources won't come back, so we need to if future longevity is worth some sacrifice now.  We need to see that conservationists and agriculturalists are working towards the same goal of protecting our land while producing from it.    

The Great Debate

For the past year, I have been taking a class at the University of Illinois on bringing business into pork production.  In my last post, I talked about how farmers need to look at their business as a manufacturing process, although consumers may not agree.  Many farmers look at the role of uneducated consumers in the market and become terribly frustrated.  At my class I talked to two other pork producers who were incensed at the idea of having to convert their gestation stall barns into pen spaced barns.  Another farm in the class just put up a new 1,000 sow stalled barn.  When I heard these things, I immediately thought, have you guys looked at the newspaper, or turned the TV on in the last year?

McDonald's, Campbell's Soup, Burger King, and countless other businesses have pledged to use pork products that come from group or pen housing, instead of individual pen gestation.  The Humane Society is putting pressure on the  Wall Street Journal to influence Tyson packing plants to phase out the purchase of animals from farms with stall gestation.  Whether or not the science condemns or praises the individual pig housing is irrelevant, people have decided they believe the practice is wrong, and that it is important enough to fight for pen housing.  This doesn't mean that farmers should stop fighting to grow their animals the way they see fit, but it does mean that you can't fight it to the point that it clouds business decision making ability.

During dinner, two of my classmates and I were having a discussion about our group project, which will be on the differences in the types of sow housing.  The two men both saw the individual sow housing as the only way they were willing to do business.  The argument they stood by was that we as an industry can not just lay down and let the consumer walk all over us.  I on the other hand, see it entirely differently.  We can produce all the pigs we want any way we want to, but that doesn't guarantee someone will buy them. We have to cater our products to the consumer, because in the end that is where we gain our value.  As farmers we don't consider that we feed pigs certain diets and embrace certain genetics because that is what the market wants, however, when it comes to housing options we just can't deal with it.  Many of the producers in the class talk as if they have worked with the different housing options, labeling one as far superior to the other.  Coming from a farm with nontraditional housing practices, I see that you can be profitable in many different systems.  Most have not had the opportunity, they just hold a bias.

Any switch in the way we practice agriculture gives us the opportunity to innovate.  We shouldn't shy away from challenges, but learn to work through them.  Every step we take will have risks, and costs, but that doesn't mean its not worth taking.  While we need to fight for the right to choose how we produce the nation's food supply, we also need to look at how to make our production more transparent, so we do not have to keep fighting these types of battles over every operating decision. Winning in the sow housing battle isn't the goal, winning over consumers should be.    

True or False

Over the last week, I have had the chance to attend a class on pork production process management.  The premise for the class is getting pork producers to think about their business like it is manufacturing, and become more efficient and effective by monitoring throughput.  Each farmer in the room understood the connections, and how farming is a form of manufacturing.  As a farmer and business person, I realize that animal production is a manufacturing process, and that doesn't scare me. Making your lunch in the morning, can also be looked at from a manufacturing standpoint, and I understand that by looking at it that way, we aren't automatically using robots, and automation to "build" pigs.  We are just trying to become better at the processes we do everyday, managing our people and resources to the best of our ability.

Looking at the class, I realize that consumers could be appalled by the concept as agriculture as manufacturing.  Many like to believe that farms are quaint little places with 2 ducks, 2 cows, and a goat thrown in for good measure.  What they don't realize is that farming is a business.  Farmers buy things from suppliers, like feed ingredients, seeds, and animals for reproduction  in order to improve the meat quality the animals will provide.  People then are willing to buy the meat produced for a price.  What happens in between in order to make money for the farmer is business.   There is nothing sinister about the process, or unnatural.  Every other industry does the same thing, for example, your clothes are not made by an elderly woman working out of her cottage, nor do I think that people want it that way. 

At work last week, I was talking to one of my coworkers about the common misconceptions people have about animal agriculture.  One is created in part by advertisers, but driven by uninformed consumers.  If you ever have looked at chicken sold in the grocery store, it is often labeled as hormone free.  What consumers don't realize is that Chickens are never treated with hormones because it doesn't make any type of economical sense.  Hormones are very expensive, and a chicken that will mature naturally in about six weeks, it does not add up to give it hormones. However, because of this labeling, people assume that chickens are given hormones at least part of the time.

Another misconception is that animals sent to market are often laden with drugs and so sick they have to be basically carried into the packing plant.  What consumers don't realize is that animals going to market have to be rated as #1.  This means no antibiotics in the system, no limping, wheezing, or other signs of sickness or distress.  If producers were to send these types of animals to market, then they would not be paid for them, and all scheduled contracts with packing plants would be jeopardized because the farmer has delivered a substandard animal.  It doesn't pay for anyone involved in the process to have a sick animal in the food supply.

As advocates for agriculture, we must realize what types of misconceptions are out there and work hard to correct them.  It takes time and effort, but by being transparent to consumers we can make progress towards coming to a consensus on how food should be produced.     

Hog Production How-To?

There is a huge disconnect between consumers and producers.  Many consumers are emotional about their food choices, and use lobbyists and legislation to influence the production process.  Producers of course resist, because as the "experts" of animal production, they do not want to change to a process that may be more expensive.  There are things that we could change on the farm, and things that we will be forced to change. It's not being against gestation stalls, its about limiting the government's ability to regulate our production practices.  In a way, the buyers of pork are doing us a favor by not wanting to buy from farms with stalls.  If they didn't take a stand against it due to public pressure, the government would, and in some states has.  We need to have the self regulation when at all possible.

Even the type of regulation that could be handed down from the government could vary greatly.  In an article from the Pork Network titled Commentary: Who's in Charge of Animal Welfare, a recent amendment was made to the Farm Bill that would limit what types of laws states could make in regards to animal production.  Instead of enacting laws state-by-state, as HSUS currently lobbies to do, laws with have to be made federally, making universal standards for the whole country.  Federal laws are generally less efficient, but they also make the production much more cohesive across the country, all farms having the same restrictions to production.

Another area of concern is that our suppliers do not seem to grapple with the same brute force of public opinion as the swine industry does.  Pfizer, Merck, Bayer, Novartis, etc., supply us through our vets with pharmaceuticals and feed supplements,  seem to not realize that the food production system is under attack.  When they come into meetings and discuss new products, they do not talk about more consumer compliant options, or that antibiotic use could be limited.  They talk about products that will alter the biology of the animals in a way that makes the packers uncomfortable.  When producers ask questions about products and use with impending regulations, the companies don't seem to think of it as an issue, and quickly go back to promotion.  Maybe that is because the real money for them is in companion animal and human health areas, and we are just a segment to diversify the portfolio.  I don't blame these companies, as farmers are buying the products, but I wonder if they are only thinking in the short term.

I have a few vegan friends, most of which are not against meat, just the way it is produced.  In their vigor to cut out all things animal, they try to have no animal products used in any part of their lives.  Yet they drive cars, ride bikes, use make-up, write with pens, and wear screen printed clothing. 
People have this moral dilemma about using animals for nutrition; to sustain life.  They feel bad when they think about Fido and how nice he is.  They feel bad about making other things suffer.  It is a hard dilemma to overcome. 

I spent a long portion of some summers in Saskatchewan growing up, and that lead me to come to terms with the way we use animals to maintain ourselves.  It's the nature of the land, of the cycle, of the ecosystem.  We happen to find ourselves at the top of the food chain; we shouldn't feel bad about it.  At the same time, we can't allow wasteful usage of our resources to occur.  Each animal needs to be killed for a purpose.  We become more efficient in this way, and garner more respect from consumers for using all that we have been given.

A big obstacle is educating the consumer about where their food comes from, and some young farmers have been making inroads.  After the success of I'm Farming and I Grow It, another young man has taken to the Internet with some pop music with Farm It Maybe. Enjoy!