We didn't have the legislature or the DNR trying to figure how to deal with the enormous amount of waste concentrated in a small area. We didn't have taxpayer funded research trying to make pig poop smell good. There is significant evidence that family farmers are more efficient producers of pork. Studies from Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, and Iowa have shown very similar evidence of this. Most economists agree that 150 sows is the point at which most economies of scale are achieved.
Additional farmers raising pigs are more beneficial than the number of pigs.
The biggest bang for our buck is with more instead of fewer hog operations. A University of Missouri study shows that for every corporate contract job created, three jobs are lost in livestock production. So we're real glad that Princeton thinks there is an economic boom, but economic heaven in one small area means economic hell for hog producers and the businesses that rely on them in the rest of the state and region. Missouri has lost almost half of our hog producers since 1994, so a few towns get some jobs while other similar-size towns built around family farms lose out. If corporate hog production was in fact the result of successful technology to provide readily available meat supplies, we as taxpayers should be real happy.