Contract vs. independent pork production: does financing matter?

The pork production industry continues to change rapidly. The Midwestern hog production industry, in particular, is experiencing a dramatically changing organizational structure due in part to an increasing cost competitiveness as the industry trends towards larger scales of production, increasingly specialized production, and production utilizing the best advantages technology currently makes available. Many Midwestern pork producers are facing an increasing number and complexity of arrangements to produce pork. This changing structure of production comes at a time when the number of producers involved in pork production continues to decline and the volume of hogs produced grows, reflecting the trend toward fewer but larger production operations.