Livestock and grain experts in Iowa are sharing their experience with Ukrainian farmers who are trying to keep their hog operations viable despite the Russian invasion.

While the ongoing war initially shut down their operations, Ukrainian hog farmers are making a comeback. However, due to blockades and other restrictions, they have nowhere to send their hogs, so they are raising them to be a food source for Ukrainians, and need some advice.

Justin Brown, assistant teaching professor and swine veterinarian at Iowa State University, gets up at 3 a.m. Iowa time to teach about 80 farmers from the Association of Ukrainian Pig Breeders best practices and answer their questions.

"With this kind of influx of new pig producers, there was a want and a need for more information on swine diseases and swine health, and biosecurity," Brown outlined.

Ukrainian breeders say about 15% of the nation's commercial pig inventory was lost, leading to a 100,000-ton drop in pork production in 2022. Brown and the Ukrainian farmers are optimistic the rejuvenated industry will yield healthy food for the country's citizens.

Brown pointed out blockades have also stopped Ukrainian farmers from exporting their grain, leaving it idle in the country, but providing a ready source of hog feed. Brown emphasized understanding how to feed the animals correctly is a critical part of his message.

"It's part of our jobs to help get that information out, to not only stakeholders here within Iowa and the U.S., but also internationally," Brown explained. "So that we can make pig production better, and help with the welfare and health of pigs all over the world."

"A pig is a pig is a pig," Brown added. While there may be some genetic variances here and there, they are all susceptible to the same diseases, no matter what country they live in.


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Advocates for a fair, sustainable and healthy food system have released a report showing increasing consolidation in Montana's agriculture sector.

Economists said such conditions can lead to market manipulation. The report from the advocacy group Farm Action showed 85% of the beef raised on U.S. farms, including in Montana, is produced by four companies: Cargill, JBS USA, National Beef and Tyson Foods.

Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, said the concentration in the ag industry is happening all the way from farm fields to the consumer's plate, and she warned it creates the potential for artificial price controls.

"This is the scenario in almost every sector of the food supply chain," Huffman pointed out. "Seeds, fertilizer, farm equipment, beef, pork and poultry processing, and retail groceries; every one of those sectors I just named has upwards of 60% to even 85% of those markets are controlled by four corporations."

Consolidation in the livestock industry means more animals are raised in large confinement operations, where manure runoff can affect air quality, ground and surface water in rural Montana. Operators have said they are researching more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to raise livestock while trying to keep up with growing consumer demand.

Huffman argued monopolies can lead to collusion, price fixing and other types of market manipulation. Her group and others are urging lawmakers in Congress to address the issue in the pending Farm Bill.

"We're calling on the government to reclaim its role as an enforcer of our antitrust laws and break up these dominant corporations," Huffman explained. "In order to free our economy to start working for the people who are producing, processing and distributing our food."

The current Farm Bill, which officially expired last September, has been temporarily extended, although lawmakers have yet to agree on a new version of the major legislation.


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Some northeast Wisconsin residents are challenging a wastewater permit issued by the state to a large dairy operation.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reissued the wastewater permit to Pagel's Ponderosa Dairy in August. Petitioners are now requesting the State Division of Hearings and Appeals to review the terms for water monitoring and limits on the number of animals.

Adam Voskquil, attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates, said the DNR has the authority to protect communities.

"We've been pushing for a few years now to see them use that more often, and this is one of those instances where they didn't do enough," Voskquil contended.

A 2021 Supreme Court ruling allowed the DNR to include terms on groundwater monitoring and setting size limits on concentrated animal feeding operations. But with more than 330 of them across the state, Voskquil said the DNR has included the terms in only a handful of permits. A spokesperson for the agency said they cannot comment on ongoing litigation.

Pagel's Ponderosa Dairy owns about 20,000 animals between its two locations in Kewaunee County, and produces more than 100 million gallons of liquid manure it spreads across 10,000 acres of land. Voskquil argued the land is susceptible to contamination.

"Pagel's is kind of playing a shell game with transferring manure between their operations," Voskquil asserted. "There just needs to be some threshold, some limit, to the growth of this operation."

The DNR states concentrated animal feeding operations are required to spread manure on land set back from drinking water wells, sinkholes and fractured bedrock and cannot have any runoff to rivers and lakes, among other requirements.


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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the name of the poultry producer. (9:55 a.m. MDT, Oct. 28, 2924)


Some Wisconsin poultry farmers have been left in the lurch after a sudden bankruptcy shed light on a law that prevented state officials from coming to their aid.

The processor Pure Prairie worked with about 50 farms in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa to raise broiler chickens.

Agriculture departments in the other two states stepped in to help farmers after Pure Prairie filed for bankruptcy last month. But in Wisconsin, farmers had to resort to giving away tens of thousands of chickens on Facebook.

Jason Mugnaini, executive director of government relations for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, said the state just didn't have the structure to deal with such a situation.

"This very particular circumstance identified a gap in our state and federal laws," said Mugnaini. "That's really what it came down to, is that we didn't know that this was even a gap that existed in state statute."

He explained that in Wisconsin dairy, vegetable, and grain farmers have an indemnity fund available to make a claim in situations like this. Poultry farmers don't.

Reports from one farmer in western Wisconsin say Pure Prairie owes him nearly $100,000.

Mugnaini said the first part of the crisis was getting the chickens off the farms. Now, it's about keeping these farmers in business.

"The abrupt nature in which this really occurred left people in some really dire straits," said Mugnaini, "and that's really what the biggest challenge is right now, is how are we going to get these folks back up and running, continuing to produce agriculture, get them paid for what they're owed?"

On the federal level, poultry farmers have coverage under the Packers and Stockyards Act to make a claim and be compensated.

Mugnaini said it's just taking longer than they expected and there's no way to speed up the process.

"Working though trying to get those dollars out the door is going to be the most important piece of the next steps of this," said Mugnaini, "and then really trying to figure out how something like this happens, how we can prevent it from going forward."

The Wisconsin Farm Bureau says there are about 300 poultry farms like these in Wisconsin.


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