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Missouri Hog Farms Increase for the First Time in Decades

Kelly Kenoyer
/
KBIA

Missouri gained more than 550 hog farms between 2012 and 2017, bucking a decades-long trend of fewer and fewer hog farms each year- a 26 percent increase. The USDA Census of Agriculture revealed the surprising new trend, and showed growth in overall hog production as well.

Eric Bohl, a spokesperson for the Missouri Farm Bureau, said the shift is likely because hog farming has fewer barriers for entry than other farm industries in Missouri. “We’ve seen a lot of growth among young and beginning farmers in the census,” he said. “You can buy some hogs and get an operation started for less capital investment than it takes to get a sufficient amount of crop land to make a go of it.”

Much of the growth came from very small farms selling fewer than 25 pigs a year, but the state saw some growth in farms with 6,000 or more hogs sold a year as well.

The state had nearly 400,000 more hogs in 2017 compared to 2012, but it still doesn’t quite compare to years past. There are over three million pigs in Missouri today, but the state had over five million in the pork heyday of the 1940s, far outnumbering the human population at the time.