It was a miracle drug that actually made healthy pigs. I think most producers are still using that vaccine.
The next year, the dollar was starting to climb. The quality of feed was excellent. We now had sows that were healthy. We were having larger pigs and larger litters because of healthier pigs. And it just seemed that everything was growing, because we now had people who had gone into the industry who had never had a pig on the farm before. Obviously, the processors jumped in, because some of them were financing this. Quite honestly, they were mostly financing this. They were expanding the processing.
So you build an industry on cheap feed and a cheap dollar. When I talk to other business people, they say that if you do that, you're going to crash. We have an industry that crashed. I'm here to help the industry. I'm just trying to understand what we're going to do so that this doesn't happen again.
As Curtiss said, we have all these barns sitting out here, and we've brought in four or five programs to help the industry. Some have been more successful than others. But how are we going to stop this from happening again?
The pork prices started up and took a bit of a dip. They're going to come back. I was at a meeting not too long ago, and I was talking to some beef guys and pork guys, and I asked the one guy, younger than you by a bit, how it was going. He said it had been tough going. I asked how lamb was doing, and he said, “Well, lamb's really selling.” I asked if there was anything around here, and he said, “Well, we've got one down the road. It's about 7,000 acres.” I said, “Wow, are you going to buy it?” He said he would go down on his hands and knees to buy that farm.
There's a hog producer. I'm going into the equipment dealer...and they're selling equipment to all parts of agriculture, including hog and beef guys. Land rents in my area continue to go up. Land prices continue to go up. It's not driven in areas where there's supply management--it's driven a bit by them--but in the areas where I don't have supply management....
I need some help to understand a little bit. Curtiss, how do we come out of this? I mentioned that to Mr. Preugschas one time. How do we get out of this, and what are you doing so that we don't get back into it again? We will come out of it.
I agree that we need to look at it. I don't know where cost of production comes in. I know how it works, but I'm not sure how you implement it, because everybody's cost of production.... You have land at $1,000, and you have 7,000 or 8,000 or 10,000, depending on where you are.