California Proposition 12 may be here to stay, as the Senate Farm Bill does not include any legislation to address it. Several swine industry groups, including the National Pork Producers Council, expressed their disappointment in the decision and are working to get it included in the final version of the farm bill, but there are swine producers who have actually seen benefits in their swine operations after becoming compliant to Prop 12. One of those swine producers is Brent Hershey, owner and president of Hershey Ag, an independently owned diversified ag company that has been around since 1980. Hershey said he started out with gestation crates and was initially resistant to make the necessary changes to become Prop 12 compliant, but public perception led him to change his stance.
Hershey said the watershed moment for him happened at the dinner table with his family.
In order to become compliant, Hershey said they took a broad look at animal husbandry in order to create a system that meets the standards of Prop 12 while also maintaining the production levels they already had.
Hershey said the bottom line is Prop 12 and other similar legislation shows that consumers nowadays are more mindful of the way livestock animals are raised, and the swine industry was the only industry that had enclosures that prevented animals from being able to move and turn around.
For his operation, Hershey said they were able to keep using the equipment they already had- the main change was to meet the square footage requirements.
With the change to group sow housing, one of the biggest challenges is managing aggression, as sows can become very aggressive in group settings. Hershey said the time periods after breeding and weaning were the most difficult to manage, but they figured out a system using what he calls “sow condos.”
While they ended up giving up more square footage than they would’ve preferred, Hershey said the amount of space they settled on for breeding and weaning pens provided enough benefits to make it worth it.
Some parts of the reproduction cycle are still too dangerous for open housing, though. Hershey said they still use farrowing crates in order to protect the newborn piglets.
We have seen that Prop 12 compliance is logistically feasible, but is it financially attainable? Stay tuned for more of the conversation with Brent Hershey as we go over how he ensured this would be an economically smart change as well.
