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Agriculture This Week: Farming always evolving

When you have grown up on a farm in the 1960s and ‘70s it is almost beyond belief the changes in farming we see today. 

It was a mixed farm for me, and that meant pigs and grain. 

In my youth I hauled a lot of ground grain to feed the pigs using cleaned five-gallon pails that originally were filled with some weed spray, or another. 

Looking back over some 40-years it seems like it was such a crazy thing, but repurposing the pails was pretty standard. I’m pretty sure potatoes came from the garden to the cellar bin in similar pails. 

Of course I clearly recall Dad taking plugged nozzles off the sprayer, his gloves getting soaked in the process, and then simply blowing out the nozzle with his breath. 

Knowing what we do now it’s a wonder what health problems were caused in a time we didn’t know better, or were reluctant to change. Dad lived to a considerable age, his heart giving out one day, but one wonders. 


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Season 7, Episode 4: Using Data to Better Manage PRRSV

Video: Season 7, Episode 4: Using Data to Better Manage PRRSV

PRRS continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing pork producers, but each outbreak can also provide valuable information about herd recovery, losses and the management decisions that follow.In this episode, Dr. Ana Paula Serafini Poeta Silva, a research scientist at Iowa State University, discusses the PRRS Outbreak Management Program, or POMP, and what researchers have learned from a database containing information from more than 700 breeding-herd outbreaks. She explains how POMP uses data from individual outbreaks to establish benchmarks producers can use to better understand what to expect during recovery, including potential losses and the time it may take for a herd to return to baseline production. The conversation also explores how PRRS management has evolved, including the role of live virus inoculation and modified-live vaccines.