Patchwork Family Farms: Creating a Fair Market for Missouri Farmers
12 February 2003
Started with the support of Oxfam America, this small grassroots cooperative of hog farmers offers buyers something no factory farm can produce: a quality product.
By Kristina Canizares
"I just kinda got a love for hogs."
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| Carl Weihardt and his loving hogs |
Carl Weihardt leans back against the fence to tickle the ears of his favorite sow. She came running over as soon as she saw him like a loyal dog, an expression on her face that looked for all the world like a delighted grin.
"Practically every one of them I got is pets. They know me and I know them and they're just part of the family."
Carl has been raising hogs all his life on this piece of land in central Missouri--a state known for its quality pigs. Hog raising has always been the mainstay of Missouri's family farmers, something to keep the lights on when the harvest was poor, and a source of friendly competition at the county fairs. Missouri farmers were proud of their hogs, up until the last few years.
Recently, the hog market has been going haywire. "It's like riding a roller coaster, got down to 8 cents a pound," lamented Carl, "Got so a bottle of medicine cost more than what a fat hog will bring you."
In just eight years, Missouri has lost almost three quarters of its hog farmers, and it's not because the demand for pork declined. It's all about the new neighbors: factory farms. More factory than farm, these facilities can house tens of thousands of pigs in boxes, fattening them up on cheap feed and shipping them out to slaughterhouses in the hundreds. They are owned by massive food corporations, slick with money to keep lawyers and politicians happy and undercut the competition. Family farmers just can’t stay in the game.
"It just makes me mad that the big guys come in here and make it hard on us small guys to try to keep the farm viable," Carl protested. He has watched almost all of his neighbors sell off their sows and dismantle their pens, and now has a hard time even finding a store that will sell him hog feed in his county. For those farmers who have no other options, desperation can drive them to sign suicidal contracts with these same corporations to build factory facilities on their own property (and at their own expense). The vast majority of farmers never pays off the initial purchases; and they are left with a huge debt and a big, stinking lagoon of pig excrement upsetting anyone downwind.
Carl has sought out another option, he recently joined a small grassroots cooperative called Patchwork Family Farms that is working to find a fair market for Missouri's hog farmers. Patchwork began with support from Oxfam America as a project of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, a nonprofit dedicated to defending the family farmer against corporate agriculture. They realized, without some new alternative market, family farmers would be forced out of hogs altogether. They had to offer buyers something no factory farm can produce: a quality product.
"Corporations control the marketplace. They can undercut us any time they want," said Rhonda Perry, Program Director at the MRCC and a life-long hog farmer. "We need to have a market presence that differentiates us from corporations."
Factory hogs are kept indoors and given antibiotics every day right up until slaughter to keep them from succumbing to the crowded, unsanitary conditions. Patchwork pigs are raised outdoors in a healthy environment, well fed, and given minimal antibiotics only if they are ill. The difference is obvious to consumers after the first bite, and farmers only have to raise pigs the way they always have.
"You've got to have a conscience," explained Carl. "I've got to lay down to sleep at night and know I did the best job I could with my animals. The big factories, I don't see how they can have any pride or interest in how the animals really are taken care of. A hog is made to be outside in the dirt. When they're inside and never see daylight that'd be just like putting me in jail."
Patchwork's tasty, healthy pork and competitive prices have earned it a steadily increasing pool of loyal buyers, from formal restaurants to inner city church congregations. By paying farmers four to five times the market price for their products, they have kept their fifteen members in the hog business. Although their market is not yet big enough to provide buyers for every struggling hog farmer, its competitive advantage over the factory producers is clear.
"I am concerned about what the American people eat," said Carl emphatically. "I wouldn't want them to eat anything that I wouldn't put on the table for my family."
