Last week this column told how Bob Uphoff, a third generation hog farmer in the towns of Fitchburg and Dunn just south of Madison, had changed his operation from producing commodity pork to one aimed at a specialized market.
Uphoff has long been involved in local, state and national swine programs and had watched the industry move from where almost every Wisconsin farm once raised dairy cows, hogs and chickens to today’s mainly single enterprise farming system.
He saw Wisconsin’s swine industry shrink from near 2 million hogs in 1980 to the recent Dec. 1, 2010, estimate of about 340,000 head, most of which end up in the commodity meat market.
“Actually pigs were a way to add value to corn, and most farms had at least a few sows,” Uphoff explains. “Farmers gradually specialized, and the 15- to 20-sow farms quit the hog business, and the 100-, 1,000- and bigger sow operations came about.”
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