The persisting coronavirus slowdown at pork plants has stranded 2 million hogs on the farm with no buyer, and the backlog is growing, said economist Steve Meyer on Wednesday, suggesting that some farmers will be forced to destroy their animals. In Iowa, the No. 1 hog state, home to one-third of the U.S. herd, state officials said they will pay farmers up to $3.6 million apiece to help cover the cost of carcass disposal.
The Iowa program would be the first in the nation at the state level. The USDA offers cost-share funding of up to $25,000 for the disposal of livestock by burial, incineration, composting, or transporting carcasses to a rendering plant or landfill.
“We’ve got a backlog of over 2 million head right now,” said Meyer, of the agricultural consultancy Kerns and Associates, on the Adams on Agriculture program. “It’s going up. We’re still not slaughtering all of the hogs that are available. We don’t have enough places to go with them to get them processed.”
Hog slaughter fell to 1.5 million head a week at the start of May, when plants ran at less than 80 percent of their normal volume of 450,000 to 500,000 head a day. Last week, the slaughter totaled 2.1 million head, still 180,000 fewer than the same week in 2019. Some of the largest pork plants in the country closed temporarily in April because of coronavirus outbreaks among workers. President Trump signed an executive order at the end of April directing plants to operate during the pandemic.
According to data collected by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, at least 67 meatpacking workers had died and more than 18,000 employees had tested positive for Covid-19 as of midday Wednesday.
Pork plants are rebuilding volume, said Meyer. “The progress is steady, but it’s going to be slow from here on and the easy ones are done.” It may be difficult to regain normal volume for an extended period considering the risk of new outbreaks, he said. “I still don’t find a place where we can take all these pigs. … I hate the implications of that, but I don’t see a way around the numbers.”
Iowa agriculture secretary Dave Naig announced a $40-a-head disposal assistance program for farmers who kill their hogs for lack of a buyer. Payments will be made on a maximum of 90,000 market-ready hogs, weighing at least 225 pounds, for a total of $3.6 million per farmer.
“Pork producers are going to extraordinary lengths to donate pork to food banks and identify other markets for their animals, but in many cases it’s not enough to make up for the backlog happening on farms,” said Naig. “Producers are being forced to make very difficult decisions, and this is one way the state is working to support them during these extremely challenging times.”
Hog farmers have a deadline of Friday to apply for the assistance. The state plans to notify winners on Monday, with culling to be completed by June 5. Up to three rounds of awards will be made. “Each approved applicant will receive funding for at least 1,000 animals and up to 30,000 animals per round, depending on the number of applicants,” said the Iowa Agriculture Department.
In Minnesota, the Board of Animal Health was operating at least two sites for composting hog carcasses. At a site in Nobles County, in the southwestern corner of the state, “Dead pigs are fed into an industrial wood-chipper with an equal amount of wood chips or straw,” said the Minneapolis Star Tribune on May 15. “The resultant mixture is piled like a windrow.”
Iowa was home to 24.6 million of the 77.6 million hogs on U.S. farms, according to a quarterly survey released about a month ago by the USDA. It was the largest March 1 total since the USDA began keeping records in 1988.
The USDA’s $16 billion coronavirus relief package includes cash payments of $35 or $45 per head to hog producers based whether the pigs weigh more or less than 120 pounds. Payments will be calculated by the number of hogs sold from Jan. 1 to April 15 and inventory owned between April 16 and May 15, said the USDA.