Best Of

The Fellow Aiden, like their scales and kettles, has an Easter Egg game built in. Pointless and fun.

I have not properly vetted this article, but it sounds about right.
https://foodprint.org/reports/the-foodprint-of-pork/

In the early 1990s, 87 percent of hogs were sold on the open market, and the top four pork packing companies controlled 46 percent of the market. Huge change swept the industry in the late 1990s. By 2001, only 17 percent of hogs were sold on the open market, leaving even fewer options for small-scale hog farmers to sell their animals. It has only gotten worse: in 2018, only two percent of hogs were sold on the open market. For the other 98%, farmers are on contract with big pork companies and get paid for raising animals according to the company’s strict guidelines.

The pork industry around this time was squeezed by the skyrocketing popularity of chicken, which had exploded, once pioneers like Tyson Foods bought up all parts of the supply chain, from feed companies to slaughterhouses, in a process called vertical integration. Chicken was suddenly cheap to produce and cheap to buy at stores, where it cut into sales of pork. To catch up, the pork industry (led by the Smithfield), imitated Big Chicken’s business model, vertically integrating its supply chain, putting hogs indoors in massive barns, and contracting with farmers to raise them.

So, it is no wonder that independent hog farmers have gone out of business by the hundreds of thousands. Since 1987, the number of hog farms has dropped nearly 75 percent, from 243,000 to 66,000 in 2017. Meanwhile, the number of hogs has steadily increased, from 52 million in 1987 to 72 million in 2017. Today, 61 percent of hog slaughter is controlled by just three companies: Smithfield, Tyson Foods and JBS USA.

In the pork industry, as in many others, these firms got to the top not by being the most efficient, but by simply buying out their competition. For instance, Smithfield, founded in 1936 in Virginia, bought Circle Four Farms in 1997; Carroll’s Foods, the country’s fourth-largest hog producer, in 1999; Murphy-Brown, the largest, in 2000; and Farmland Foods, the sixth largest, in 2003, before Smithfield itself was purchased in 2013 by Chinese-based Shuanghui International, now called WH Group. At the time of the buyout, Smithfield owned not only all of the producers it had been buying up, but also North Carolina’s two largest pork processing plants. With each new asset, Smithfield controlled a larger share of the market, making it even easier to make the next purchase. Tyson and JBS have grown in the same manner, until much of the global meat industry is controlled by these three corporations.

It's close... I'm pretty much shot. But I know when I'm 80 I wish I felt like I do today, so I'm not going to complain.

@Bob_Luken said:

@VegasFrank said:
I was potty trained when I was one. Been making my pee pee in the potty ever since.

>

@VegasFrank said:
You simply will never get me to understand the fetish that you boys have with pissing in a shower with the water running.

>
>
https://forum.cigar.com/discussion/896568/do-you-pee-while-taking-a-shower-or-do-you-get-out-and-pee-in-the-toilet-then-get-back-in/p1

@Bob_Luken said:

@VegasFrank said:
I was potty trained when I was one. Been making my pee pee in the potty ever since.

>

@VegasFrank said:
You simply will never get me to understand the fetish that you boys have with pissing in a shower with the water running.

>
>
https://forum.cigar.com/discussion/896568/do-you-pee-while-taking-a-shower-or-do-you-get-out-and-pee-in-the-toilet-then-get-back-in/p1

That's not the first time that's ever been said my friend. Many people in many places have said this many times.

“Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.” Bilbo Baggins

@silvermouse said:

@Jrflickster said:

@silvermouse said:
fired up the wood stove for the first time this fall.

What do you have for backup? Electric baseboard

Haven't had backup for 35 years but Rachel is concerned about dealing with the wood and stove if I kick the bucket before she does so getting a mini split heat pump this fall .

@Rdp77 this was my question/concern
Edit: even to go away for a weekend would be nice not to think about frozen pipes

@dirtdude said:

@Rdp77 said
You don’t hang them upside down to dry and cure?

I used to hang the entire plant years ago but there doesn't seem to be a consensus these days.
That's all open desert by the orange arrow, a few javalinas are about all you get back there.

I was pointing at the big àss plant back there. That guy seems to know what he’s doing 🤣

Took my camera on my walk this morning. Seems like the only safe place to walk is a Christmas tree farm. The woods are far to dangerous with all the widow makers.

@Jrflickster said:

@silvermouse said:
fired up the wood stove for the first time this fall.

What do you have for backup? Electric baseboard

Haven't had backup for 35 years but Rachel is concerned about dealing with the wood and stove if I kick the bucket before she does so getting a mini split heat pump this fall .