July 16, 2007

Wisconsin may be the new Iowa for US pig producers

Wisconsin has been identified as the next place to be for pork producers hoping to set up large scale pig farms.

Wisconsin holds a lot of promise for setting up farm facilities as there is a comparative lack of large-scale farming facilities, analysts said.

A booming pork industry for the past four years has prompted pork producers to look for new places to set up their pig farms as more producers applied to be involved in large-scale pig farming.

For example, from 2002 to 2004, an average of 78 permits a year for animal feeding operations were issued in Iowa, the top pig breeding state in the US. Most applications were for pig confinement farms.

In 2005, the figure doubled to 203 and last year it rose 50 percent to 318.

Most of the 17 million pigs raised in Iowa are raised in confinement operations.