What's It Like to Be a Pig Farmer?

Chronicled in the award-winning film The Last Pig, Comis’s journey from raising pigs to growing vegetables is an emotional one. Day after day, as he raised pigs and grew to love them as individuals, he grappled with the betrayal he felt he was inflicting in sending them to slaughter.

Comis’s grassy farm was unique, a far cry from the barren concrete factories where almost all pigs today spend their lives. But the inner conflict he felt is common among people who raise animals for food. With enough resources and the courage to make the transition to vegetable farming, Comis was able to leave the industry.

Most contract pig farmers, trapped in a cycle of debt, are not.

What is a pig farmer?

A pig farmer is someone who makes a living by raising pigs, known in the industry as “hogs,” for food. You might be imagining a small independent farmer like Bob Comis, who raises pigs with at least some degree of control over how they’re cared for, sold, and eventually slaughtered. But the reality is that most pig farmers don’t even own the pigs they’re raising. To understand why, we need to take a look at the pork industry in the United States.

A whopping 70% of pork production in the US is controlled by just four corporations: Smithfield, JBS, Tyson, and Hormel. That means almost all the food at the supermarket that comes from pigs—bacon, ham, sausages, pepperoni—is produced and packed by one of these Big Four meatpacking companies.

In a marketplace with so little competition, pig farmers have almost no bargaining power. Without the flexibility to negotiate a higher price for their pork, farmers are at the mercy of a few powerful buyers. On top of this, it’s nearly impossible for small farms to deliver the same low prices and high volumes that huge producers can achieve. These machine-like operations churn out cheap pork and drive smaller producers out of business. With limited options, most pig farmers will sign a production contract with a big meatpacking company—only to find later that they’re deep in debt and unable to shift careers.

In a production contract, the farmer does not actually own the pigs they’re raising. Instead, the pork packing company—one of those Big Four again—owns the animals. The farmer is on the hook for all the expenses associated with labor, equipment, maintenance, and raising the animals. Meanwhile, the meatpacking company just buys the pigs from the farmer when they’re ready to be slaughtered—and then profits off high pork prices at the supermarket. Over 60% of hogs are raised under contract in this way.

This type of production contract is virtually identical to the sharecropping model, which was used for centuries to exploit formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. Designed to replace a system built entirely on stolen labor, the sharecropping model was inherently exploitative, dooming farmers to a life of poverty. Sharecroppers would work a plot that belonged to a landowner in exchange for a small share of the harvest. If the harvest was bad, the sharecropper could end up indebted to the landowner, with no way of escaping the system.

Obviously, the lives of today’s farmers are very different from the experiences of formerly enslaved people in the American South. But the similarities between these two economic models are worth noting. A powerful entity provides an upfront investment of land and resources for a farmer, who then pays off the landowner in increments while accruing more and more debt. The result today is a brutal, highly consolidated pork industry that rakes in profits at the expense of hardworking farmers.

What does a pig farmer do?

In their day to day work, pig farmers will be responsible for one or more of the specialized stages involved in raising pigs for slaughter. The stages are:

1. Breeding. In this stage, farmers artificially inseminate female pigs and confine them throughout the gestation period (the time before they give birth). Once sows reach breeding age at around 32 weeks old, farmers repeatedly impregnate them to breed litter after litter of piglets. Throughout each of these pregnancies, farmers confine sows to gestation crates, an extreme form of confinement that prevents the animals from even turning around. For the majority of their brief lives, these mother pigs will be trapped in a crate barely the size of their bodies.
2. Farrowing. Once the sow is ready to give birth, farmers will move her to a farrowing crate, where she births a litter of piglets. At this stage, farmers will commonly “dock” piglets’ tails—slice them off without anesthetic—to prevent them from biting one another’s tails as a stress response. Tail-docking causes pigs’ tails to become incredibly sensitive, so they work harder in a desperate attempt to avoid being bitten. In another excruciating process, farmers will castrate male pigs with a knife or scalpel shortly after birth. Generally performed without anesthetic, this process can leave piglets trembling and lying alone for days.
3. Weaning - Nursery. When the piglets are around three weeks old, farmers will separate them from their mothers. Weaning can be as early as one or two weeks in the US (as compared to the 10-17 weeks of nursing that are instinctive to pigs). Sows develop a strong bond with their piglets and become distressed when separated, which can also be distressing for the farmer. After weaning, piglets are moved to a nursery until they reach 50-60 pounds.
4. Finishing. This phase covers the remainder of a pig’s life until slaughter. Farmers feed pigs until they reach slaughter weight, at which time they are transported to a slaughterhouse and suffocated in a gas chamber before a worker slits them by the throat. With an average slaughterhouse killing 1,100 pigs every hour, sadly, some animals will regain consciousness before slaughter—and many will die even before that, in the process of live transport. For pigs, slaughter is just one more horror in a life of anguish.

A pig farmer might raise hogs from birth and then sell them for finishing, a role known as a “feeder pig producer;” buy feeder pigs and then grow them to slaughter weight, a job known as a “feeder pig finisher;” or raise hogs all the way from birth to slaughter, in what is called a “farrow-to-finish operation.” But regardless of the phases a farmer is responsible for, they will inevitably interact with suffering animals on a daily basis—a lifestyle that takes a significant emotional toll.

What is the official name for a pig farm?

Most pig farmers raise pigs on a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. These specialized, environmentally modified facilities, more colloquially known as factory farms, are designed to make raising animals as efficient a process as possible.

CAFOs are barren, densely populated facilities that can house anywhere from hundreds to thousands of animals. That means the suffocating odors of manure, urine, animal feed, and dead animals all mingle together, creating a harmful and oppressive space for both the animals and the workers—and a whole host of detrimental impacts for the environment and surrounding communities.

In hog farming operations, farmers will use water to flush manure and other contaminants into a storage area or drainage system. This is highly problematic, as the untreated waste can lead to groundwater pollution. According to a report from Food and Water Watch, just one pig produces around one and a half tons of manure every year—and together, all the hog farms in the US produce about 167 million pounds of waste annually. All of this waste seeps into the groundwater, resulting in widespread contamination of public water sources.

As the pork industry has grown more consolidated, with large companies buying out smaller producers, the total number of hog farms has decreased by over 70%. As the USDA admits, “The trend toward fewer and larger hog farming enterprises has brought environmental issues to the forefront... As animal density increases, so do concerns regarding air and water quality, occupational health, and waste management of the facilities.”

Pig farmer duties and responsibilities

Among other factors, a pig farmer’s responsibilities will depend on their role and the scale and nature of their operation. Some farmers employed at a larger farm might focus on just one phase of production, like farrowing pigs. A manager, however, may oversee a number of employees working on different pig farms and examine productivity across multiple phases of production.

Many of a contract farmer’s duties and responsibilities will be imposed by their contractor. For example, the contractor may conduct regular inspections that the pig farmer has to prepare for, or institute requirements like switching to a certain type of feed. The farmer, not the contractor, is expected to pay for these changes. Trying to keep up with constantly changing requirements, the contract farmer may be dragged deeper into debt.

In some cases, a pig farmer may not interact with pigs at all—as is the case for members of an LLC, or a large organization made up of smaller pig farms. As Sentient Media reports, “one problem with LLC-style farming is that it legally shields the faceless investors in CAFOs from liability and community oversight, and they no longer have the same personal responsibility or visibility over issues like pollution violations when using CAFO manure as fertilizer.” In other words, the more distance a farmer has from the animals under their care, the less personal stake they may feel in protecting the welfare of their animals.

Pig farmer skills and competencies

People hoping to go into pig farming will need an understanding of pig nutrition and physiology, as well as experience and comfortability supervising the health and growth of the animals on a daily basis. For a managerial role, they may also need a degree in animal science and/or a high school diploma.

While caring for pigs properly takes skill and experience, many modern-day pig farmers resort to blanket solutions due to the sheer scale of their operations. For example, due to the unnaturally crowded and unhealthy conditions in a CAFO, many farmers over-rely on antibiotics to keep pigs from getting sick. Over time, this can lead to dangerous antibiotic resistance and even increase the risk of future global pandemics.

Pig farmer work environment

Pig farming is difficult, punishing, and dangerous work. According to an article published in the journal Safety, hog farming can lead to “serious acute and long-term health effects on farmworkers.” Many farmers develop noise-induced hearing loss, respiratory issues, and irritation of the eye, nose, and throat. Dealing with enormous numbers of pigs—often in the tens of thousands—also results in numerous workplace accidents.

With so many animals packed into a small space, contagious disease is also a concern. Hog farmers and employees follow strict biosecurity rules, like wearing sanitized clothes before entering a facility. Even so, pneumonia is common among factory-farmed pigs, with one report finding infection rates of 80%.

The environments pig farmers are expected to work in can be abhorrent—and for pigs, they’re far worse. In a space that prioritizes profit above all else, the abuse and mistreatment of animals and people is only to be expected.

Pig farmer work schedule

Not only is pig farming difficult; it’s a very time-intensive profession. Like many agricultural careers, it requires long hours and often entails working nights, weekends, or holidays. An article published in National Hog Farmer discusses the lack of orientations for new employees, the need to work weekends, the problem of burnout, and other labor issues within the industry.

How much money do pig farmers make?

These days, meat is more expensive than ever. Pig farmers must benefit from some of those profits, right? Wrong. Because of a few meatpacking companies’ tight grip on the market, prices for consumers have gone up—while the price of pork paid back to the farmers has plummeted.

According to a report by the Transfarmation Project, the median net income for a hog farm in 2019 was $19,318, with 47.7% of hog farmers carrying debt. And profits are on the decline. From 2015 to 2020, for every dollar a consumer spent on pork, farmers’ earnings declined from 22.7 cents to 18.5 cents. Once production costs and payment prices were factored in, the National Farmer’s Union estimated in September 2020 that farmers were actually losing 53 cents per pound of pork.

Are pig farms cruel?

While individuals likely don’t go into pig farming with the intention of being cruel to animals, extreme cruelty in the industry is inevitable. Meat companies have turned the industry into a highly efficient machine, one in which care and compassion come second to profits.

How are pigs treated by pig farmers?

Even if some people go into the business of pig farming with a love for the animals, the sheer scale and daily pressures of a modern-day hog farming operation make it nearly impossible to give the animals the care they deserve. For example, in 2020, the pig industry chose to cut its losses in response to COVID-induced slaughterhouse disruptions. This resulted in thousands of farmers “culling” healthy pigs—suffocating and roasting them alive using a brutal method called ventilation shutdown plus.

Rather than caring for the animals until they could be sent to slaughter, pig farmers killed vast numbers of them using this excruciating method. A hidden investigation revealed screams of agony and panic throughout the barns as entire herds of pigs were roasted to death. “It’s immoral, hard to see every single day,” a whistleblower employed by Iowa Select Farms, Iowa’s largest pork producer, told The Intercept.

No animal deserves to be treated this way. And pigs are truly special animals, with the capacity to feel many of the same emotions we do as humans—like happiness and excitement, but also anxiety and fear. Most researchers agree that a pig’s cognitive abilities (emotional depth, memory, spatial learning, self awareness) can be compared to those of a three-year-old child.

What you can do

Pigs deserve better, and so do the contract farmers who raise them. Big agricultural businesses like Smithfield and Tyson have a disproportionate and unfair economic influence. They argue that they’re creating jobs and supporting farmers—while instead, they’re profiting off of the exploitation of innocent animals and people.

Want to fight back against an industry that’s had too much power for too long? Initiatives like Mercy for Animals’ Transfarmation Project are supporting farmers in making the transition from animal agriculture to growing plants. And with more and more companies making animal welfare commitments, the movement to end cages is growing fast. You can help spread the word about the cruelty and inequity within the meat industry—and pressure corporate giants to eliminate cages for good. Together, we have the power to build a kinder, healthier, cage-free food system from the ground up.