A Global Bacon Shortage Is Coming

[wolfie]

Odd....it was reported in the capital city's newspaper the other day that Iowa has a RECORD crop of hogs this year. Hmm. Could Iowa cure the worldwide bacon crisis? Haha!

Actually, that's more likely to be a part of the problem than a possible solution. The record crop of hogs probably includes slaughter of breeding stock that they can't afford to keep given the shortage of (and therefore high prices for) corn. It'll take a couple breeding cycles to rebuild the population of breeder sows, once the feed situation clears up.

At least it's not as bad as for cattle - hogs produce litters with perhaps 3 or 4 potential breeding sows each (can ignore the males - they're not the limiting factors). Cows give birth to single calves (in the Old West, "Your cow had twins" would frequently lead to shooting, since the implication was someone had rustled the second calf), so there's roughly a 50/50 chance of a single replacement breeding cow being born.