News

Late 90’s hog market crash pushed Minnesota farmer to organic swine

The crash of the hog market in the late 1990’s was the impetus for a west-central Minnesota farmer’s move to organic swine production.

Jim VanDerPol and his family own Pastures a Plenty Farm in Chippewa County.

He calls 1998 a very bad year.

“I had a livestock trailer full of pigs, 60 to 120 pounds, that were going to go for $.08 cents per pound to the Hmong community in St. Paul.  And I was happy to sell them for that price because it got the feed bill stopped.”

After shrinking the farm down to three sows, VanderPol says the decision was made to stop producing pigs they couldn’t sell themselves.

“Because we didn’t trust the markets anymore, and that’s the way we’ve operated since.  From that time in 1999 with the three sows, to this time with about 100 sows, it has been kind of a steady uptrend in numbers.  And our meat sales (have seen) a steady uptrend as well.”

He tells Brownfield the organic premium provides enough margin to employ four full-time workers on his 320 acre farm.

VanderPol was a presenter at the Minnesota Organic conference earlier this month in St. Cloud.