We are getting closer -- closer to me finishing school, and closer to the wedding. But something even closer than that will happen within the next few weeks. We will start to fill our hog barn. My farmer informed me that we'll start putting pigs in by the end of next week.
Pigs have always been a part of my life, and most certainly that of my farmer. We both don't really know any different. So it only made sense for my farmer to expand his hog farm by putting up another barn. But why do that? Why not just be happy with where we are? Why are we getting bigger?
When my farmer realized that I am "the one" and that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, he also realized he would have to work hard to support me and our family. We are expanding our hog farm and getting bigger so that my farmer can support our family. Even though we are expanding and becoming a larger hog farm, my farmer and our family take animal welfare, the environment, and food safety very seriously, because all of those things affect us as well. We consume our own meat, so it's in our best interests to do the best job that we can to raise quality pork for ourselves and our consumers.
There's a social stigma out there that "big is bad." While this may be true in some scenarios, farming is not one of them (at least most of the time).
The moral of my story: "Big Ag" isn't bad. It's farmers working hard to support their families. Because there are fewer farmers in the world, they are having to consolidate into larger farms to make their businesses work. Around 96 percent of the 2.2 million farms in the U.S. are family farms. In a world that is growing more expensive to live in, farmers are doing their best, just like you, to provide for their families.
I'm proud of my farming families for working hard to provide for themselves and others.
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