When It Was a Scandal if Packers Owned Pigs

The first Pork Powerhouses® editor looks back on the vertical integration of the pork industry.

- By Betsy Freese

When Jessie Scott, editor in chief at Successful Farming, asked me to write an editorial for the 30th anniversary of Pork Powerhouses®, wmy first instinct was to turn her down. Do I want to revisit those years of reporting?

I retired from Successful Farming in 2021 after writing about the swine industry for 37 years and had seen the best and worst of that most maligned — yet fascinating — chunk of agriculture. During that time, the industry flipped from independent farrow-to-finish family farmers, like my father, to packers owning production.

The late 1990s, especially, were a time of tremendous stress in the industry. Anyone in the pig business in 1998 and 1999 will never forget it. I will share one example from my reporting that shows the transition to vertical integration.

Does Hormel Own Sows?

In August 1997, I was collecting data for the fourth annual ranking. The largest producer was Murphy Farms in Rose Hill, North Carolina, a family-owned company with 297,200 sows. The largest packer was Smithfield Foods, based in Smithfield, Virginia, which owned 120,000 sows. Vertical integration was legal in the East, but in the Midwest, most states prohibited packers from owning pigs.

I got a call from one of my sources at a large feed company, saying packer Hormel Foods was “using Rich Bell to put 20,000 sows in Colorado.” That lead was seconded by a source at a breeding stock company. Bell Farms, based in Wahpeton, North Dakota, was already on my radar, but the tie to sow ownership by Hormel was news.

I called Hormel, located in Austin, Minnesota, and spoke to Ray Bjornson, then director of pork procurement. (Bjornson passed away in 2015.) He said Hormel had a marketing contract with Bell Farms but wouldn't comment on whether Hormel owned the sows in Colorado, except to say, “We are prohibited from owning livestock or facilities in most Midwest states.”