March 28, 2008
AMES, Iowa — Right now isn't an easy time to be a pork producer. Rapidly increasing feed and production costs are making it difficult for pork producers to turn a profit.
The U.S. Pork Center of Excellence, Pork Checkoff and experts from universities around the country have created a tip sheet addressing current challenges facing the industry. The tip sheet, "Practical Ideas to Address High Feed and Production Costs," is available on the Iowa State University and Iowa Pork Producer's Pork Information Gateway (PIG) at http://isu.porkgateway.org.
"We know that it has been difficult for pork producers," said David Meisinger, director of the U.S. Pork Center of Excellence. "Our hope is with this document producers are able to find ways to cut down on their costs and ultimately improve their profitability."
In addition to strategies from researchers the tip sheet provides links to numerous resources located within PIG and throughout the World Wide Web.
PIG is an online resource tool for the U.S. Pork Industry launched in 2006. PIG provides timely information, fact sheets and references about pork production. A username and password is required to view the PIG Library, but the entire site is free for all users.
The U.S. Pork Center of Excellence, housed at the National Swine Research and Information Center at Iowa State, was established in 2005 as a public/private partnership to bring together academic expertise in research, teaching and extension related to pork production. There are two governmental agencies, two industry associations, 14 state pork producer associations and 24 land-grant universities involved in the coalition.