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Study documents economic impact of Iowa’s pork industry
A new study documents the economic impact of the pork industry in Iowa.
The study, conducted for the Iowa Pork Producers Association (IPPA), shows more than 147-thousand jobs, both direct and indirect, are tied to the pork industry.
IPPA spokesman Drew Mogler says that’s up about six-thousand from a similar study in 2017.
“We’ve had two new plants come online in the last couple years in the state of Iowa, so certainly we’ve seen job growth from that,” Mogler says. “But we’ve also continued to grow pork production, so we’ve seen some increased numbers from that as well.”
The size of pig farms in Iowa also continues to increase. The study shows 69 percent of Iowa’s hog inventory is now on farms with five-thousand or more pigs, even though those farms only represent 20 percent of all pig farms in the state.
“Those farmers are able to capture the benefits of raising pigs in modern, environmentally-controlled, state-of-the-art facilities today. Which really helps producers raise healthy animals but also make sure that they can do it in an economically robust way,” he says.
The top five counties in pig inventory are Washington, Sioux, Lyon, Hamilton and Plymouth counties. Each has more than one million pigs.
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