Photo: kallerna / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Iowa raises about a third of the country’s hogs, with more pigs than people by a wide margin, roughly 25 million at any given time.
Most are raised in confinement barns, often by farmers under contract with large companies. Packing plants in Storm Lake, Perry, Waterloo and Sioux City process them.
The industry brings jobs and a market for corn and soybean meal. It also draws complaints about manure, odor and water quality, and counties have limited say over where barns go.
Hog prices swing with exports, disease and feed costs. A big African swine fever outbreak in China in 2018 and 2019 boosted demand for U.S. pork.
Curt Hanneman writes for Clarion News Online.