Hello from Ham Country USA (soon to be China :-( (Smithfield, Va.)

[Old Virginia Joe]

Welcome aboard. BTW, did a Chinese Corporation purchase Smithfield Corp?

I'm not a shareholder, but a former employee. Last I heard, the feds have to approve the agreement, due to legal and national security issues, and the shareholders have to approve it, but I don't know when the meeting is to vote on it, AND, I understand the big wheels who are all for this already own >50% of the shares, so . . . . you do the math. BTW, we haven't had farmers feeding hogs peanuts for decades now, but, the meat is still good!

 

[Larro Darro]

Welcome from NW Florida, Joe. Post some pictures of your 'new' equipment please. We all love the classics.

 

[s219]

Welcome -- I'm a bit upriver and across the James from you in Toano. I was pretty shocked when I heard the news that Smithfield was selling out. To hear their president "spin" this on the news interview was something else -- he must be getting a sweet deal to act that delusional, like it was a great day for Americans to sell out. Yeah, right.

 

[Larro Darro]

It is never good to have a company sold overseas, but China has 1 billion folks, many of them eating pork. Their middle class is more than 300 million now. {ie.. more than our entire population} The first chart shows the rise in pork consumption in China. The next two show our pork consumption as pretty stable, with a big increase for chicken.

 

[creekbend]

I'm not a shareholder, but a former employee. Last I heard, the feds have to approve the agreement, due to legal and national security issues, and the shareholders have to approve it, but I don't know when the meeting is to vote on it, AND, I understand the big wheels who are all for this already own >50% of the shares, so . . . . you do the math. BTW, we haven't had farmers feeding hogs peanuts for decades now, but, the meat is still good!

I wasn't aware of the deletion of feeding "Peanuts". Thanks for the Heads Up. Just goes to show that We can learn something about various topics here on TBN. Thanks again.

 

[gilbertmsg]

Welcome from nearby Disputanta, VA.

Eddie

 

[Old Virginia Joe]

I wasn't aware of the deletion of feeding "Peanuts". Thanks for the Heads Up. Just goes to show that We can learn something about various topics here on TBN. Thanks again.

Here's the way it used to be. The farmers never actually "fed" the hogs peanuts--they were too valuable to be used as hog feed. What they did was, after the nut vines were dug, shocked, and harvested, there were, like all crops harvested, a certain number left in the field, as drops and spillage. The farmers didn't want them to go to waste, so they put up temporary electric fencing, and let the hogs into the field to root up and eat the leftover random nuts on the ground, along with acorns falling from the oak trees during that same extended year, and these nuts all served to fatten the hogs, and give it a special flavor, when dry-cured with (dry) salt later in the winter season. Now, once we got sophisticated in the South, and started raising hogs in cement hog houses, no one was willing to turn loose these "indoor" hogs out to pasture anymore, and so, the peanut (and acorn) fed hogs just ceased to be, except for maybe a few rogue hog farmers that are now themselves gone out of business. Most all hogs these days are contract fed a special diet, with no allowance for a farmer's creativity, since he doesn't "own" the animals himself anymore, he's just a babysitter, paid to do as he's told, so as to produce a consistent quality hog, for his wages as a contract farmer.

 

[Larro Darro]

Joe, we used to feed our cows peanut hay once in a while. As a youngun' I loved riding in the back of the truck and pulling flakes off the bales. I would eat as many of the leftover peanuts as I could. And we always let the hogs into the corn after it was picked. They stayed in the woods all the time. We would throw them a few ears of corn in the pen all along so they would remember where it was at.

In the 17th and 18th century, folks in Virginia said they lived on hog and hominy. In my neck of the woods, even in the early 20th century when my parents were young, it was the same way. Everyone had a milk cow, but for meat the hog reined supreme.

 

[Old Virginia Joe]

Welcome -- I'm a bit upriver and across the James from you in Toano. I was pretty shocked when I heard the news that Smithfield was selling out. To hear their president "spin" this on the news interview was something else -- he must be getting a sweet deal to act that delusional, like it was a great day for Americans to sell out. Yeah, right.

According to the news, the top-dogs are getting millions in bonuses if they stay on a few years and teach the Chinese the ropes. I think the top guy's bonus is something like 3.5 million? Others below him have their share to gain as well. Google it, you can find the specifics.

 

[Mr Colin]

Welcome to Tractorbynet! Best and busiest forums I've found