With corn prices rising, pigs are switching to fatty snacks. Farmers are feeding their pigs trail mix, cheese curls, tator tots, yogurt covered raisins, candy bars, french fries, and other fatty snack foods. Some farmers even mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. You may be asking why on earth they would do such a thing, similar to my initial reaction. The growing demand for corn based ethanol, a biofuel that has has become very popular over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn to near record levels. Corn is a farmers main feed and feed is a farmers biggest cost when raising animals. Therefore, farmers are feeding their animals people food since it is often less expensive.
The price of corn has doubled from 2 years ago and is now at $4 per bushel. I find it hard to believe that candy bars and trail mix can be bought for less than that. If so, I’m paying way too much. However, some extremely innovative farmers save even more. For example, one farmer found a local manufacturer that was looking to dump surplus mix that was either too salty, sprinkled with cardboard, or otherwise not up to standards. Idaho farmers are buying truckloads of french fries, hash browns, and Tator Tots. And the Hershey Co. have been selling farmers waste cocoa and the trimmings from Kit Kat bars. Nissin Foods, maker of Top Ramen, has been selling farmers the noodle scraps that accumulate under the assembly line.
Farmers costs who have been feeding their livestock fatty snacks are still paying on average 17% more than they did the year before in order to feed them. This number would be far higher if farmers weren’t using alternative food choices. One farmer said he’ll save over $40,000 by feeding trail mix, as oppose to corn, to his 5,000 hogs. But he will still be paying more than he would have 2 years ago.
