SEGMENT: MARKETING, LIVESTOCK & GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS
Harold Steele>LPL Interviews N-Z>LPL Interviews K-Z, Segment 11
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- LIVESTOCK
- George Brauer and Russell Jaeckel had the vision to create a facility for hogs. No straw, bedding, to concrete with heat, with air movement of fans, sloped floor. Genetics studies called for right animal - bones for withstanding concrete floor. Feed needed to be balanced.
- MARKETING
- Marketing skills were a must. Before farrowed twice a year and prices high in December. Now farrowing is year round. In 1998, hogs went to eight dollars a hundred per hundred weight but the cost was 35 dollars per hundred-weight. Lost thousands of pork producers. Smithfield and four other companies became owners of huge operations. Now you sign a contract - producers own the hogs and the process. Farmer owns the buildings. Reminds him of Communism he learned about on visit to Soviet farm.
- GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS
- Story about Representative Smithfield, who addressed a group about vertical integration of the industry. Steele challenged him that it was communistic. Cared about only the public and the producers like Smithfield, not the farmers welfare. No one else challenged him. Talks about protecting freedom. Thinks corporations are sucking the lifeblood out of farmers.
