Source: NC State Extension
The work day is not over when James Lamb clocks out from his job as an environmental specialist with Prestage Farms. Instead of going home, it’s time to head over to his hog farm in Sampson County.
He checks on the pigs in his two barns, ensuring they have plenty of feed and water, inspects the lagoon, and examines the spray field that fertilizes his five acres of crops. He reviews transportation schedules to see when animals will be coming and going.
These tasks, though, do not feel like work.
“This is my refuge,” he said. “When I’m off the clock and I come down here it’s usually just me and the pigs, my dogs, and nature. The farm is my favorite place to be. It doesn’t feel like work. It’s like when you’re a kid and you can’t wait to get out of school ’cause you’re going to change clothes and go out to play.”
Part of the good feeling comes from knowing he is helping feed the state, the country, and the world.
Feeding Communities and Economies
Pork is North Carolina’s second largest agricultural commodity, with a $10 billion economic impact.
“It’s a major source of employment and income,” said Kelly Zering, NC State Extension specialist in agricultural and economic resources. “Not just for farmers, but the processing plants, the places that are cooking ham and bacon, packaging products and shipping them. It supports businesses that aren’t necessarily on the farm or in the community. The genetics businesses, the pharmaceutical businesses, engineering, materials and trucking, moving the products out of state.”
Hog farms like the one operated by James Lamb contribute to an estimated economic impact of $1.48 billion in Sampson County.
Swine raised by North Carolina producers becomes pork chops and pork loin, ham and bacon. It is shipped up and down the East Coast, across the United States, and to countries including Mexico, Canada, Japan and South Korea.
And, of course, it is a staple in a cherished and delicious North Carolina tradition — barbecue.
“Barbecue has been here for a long time,” Zering said. “It’s part of our culture. Barbecue is grassroots.”
There are long-standing debates and arguments about the merits of different styles and sauces, but one thing is for certain. Eastern-style barbecue — along with bacon and ham — wouldn’t be possible without farmers like Lamb.
NC State Extension: A Vital Partner for Farmers
Lamb is representative of many of North Carolina’s pork producers.
He is a multi-generational family farmer, taking over a business started by his father. He has a relatively small operation that he works on a part-time basis. He takes pride in his role in an industry that helps feed people and provides thousands of jobs. And he relies on NC State Extension as a vital source of knowledge and as an important partner.
“They provide many services,” said Lamb, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biological and agricultural engineering from NC State in 1996. “A lot of times we get busy with life and farm life in particular, and we are not up to date on rules and regulations. Extension agents are the first with the information. Extension is also the conduit between research and the farmer. Even the best research is not going to help if it stays in the lab.”
Hog farmer James Lamb and Sampson County livestock agent Max Knowles look over state regulations on Lamb’s farm.
From researchers within NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, to expert advice on economics and regulations, to livestock agents in county centers, Extension is well equipped to support and grow one of the state’s most important livestock industries.
“As Extension agents, our task, our purpose and goal is to help farmers be sustainable and profitable,” said Max Knowles, Extension livestock agent in Sampson County. “We help farmers complete needed certifications, get in touch with specialists, and provide service work. The services we provide help them to continue to make a great product.”
Extension is ready to help with research-based knowledge and hands-on help with animal welfare and health, nutrition, waste management, reproduction and economics.
“Extension plays a big role,” said Todd See, an Extension swine specialist for 32 years and the head of the animal science department within CALS. “Extension’s value is hearing needs and coming up with solutions for them.”
That includes helping with nutrient management plans to deal with waste, a major ongoing program. Any farmer with more than 250 hogs must be certified by the state as an animal waste operator.
“The animal waste management plan describes the entire waste management system, including animal types and numbers, the amount of waste generated, manure treatment and/or storage structures, associated engineering designs, site and field maps, the fields and associated crops receiving the waste, applicable setbacks, operation and maintenance practices, and the best management practices and conservation practices specific to the operation,” Knowles said.
Extension offers an initial certification class, along with required continuing education credit hours.
The classes are taught by Extension experts, including Mahmoud Sharara and Suzanne Leonard, as well as state water resources officials. Topics include any changes to the permits, which must be renewed every five years, and new and emerging technology and research.
“That continuing education piece is exclusive to Extension,” Lamb said. “At Prestage Farms, we don’t have the means of getting the information out. We could coordinate a class, but Extension is so much easier and efficient. They provide continuing ed classes for everybody from small producers to the large integrators, all their growers and employees.”
Related: Tackling Hog Farm Wastewater
Another high impact Extension program is pork quality assurance, which helps the industry meet certification and training standards on food safety and animal welfare.
“We do a lot of work with applied research on production issues or better ways to manage animals, developing tools that measure body condition and monitor conditions in barns,” See said. “The feed mill at NC State helps deliver research-based diets. There’s a lot of programs that look at refining nutritional programs to improve health and reproduction.”
Innovation and Sustainability in Swine Farming
Hogs have been raised in North Carolina since colonial times. There are records of farmers taking their animals to ports in Virginia, where they would be packed into barrels of salt and shipped to England.
“The pork industry has been here for a long time in some form,” Zering said.
The spray field on James Lamb’s hog farm in Sampson County. Nutrients from the lagoon fertilize Lamb’s nearly 5 acres of crops.
Most of the swine production in the country is in the Midwest (Iowa and Minnesota are the top two states), which is also a major production area of corn and soybeans, primary components in hog feed. Southeastern North Carolina became the hub of the industry in the state because of similar reasons.
“Historically, North Carolina was developed as a swine producing state because it had corn and soybean production,” Zering said. “But it was also close to the urban centers in the Northeast, from Washington and Baltimore all the way up to Boston and then down to Atlanta. We became the East Coast swine producing area.”
It began to experience significant growth in the mid 1960s when the tobacco industry began to decline.
“One of the early drivers to the pork industry was replacing tobacco,” See said. “When the Surgeon General’s report came out in 1964 about tobacco causing lung cancer, a lot of our Extension programs began introducing pork production to small farms. It was a way to keep families and communities sustainable. That spurred rapid growth. It was a real need in rural North Carolina to offset some of the economic losses from tobacco.”
James Lamb and Max Knowles take a sample from the lagoon on Lamb’s hog farm.
A Strong Future for North Carolina’s Swine Industry
With growth came innovations. North Carolina was a leader in moving swine from outside pens to indoor housing.
“Around the time I started at NC State (in 1984), industry people were saying we’ve got to get the pigs up out of the mud,” Zering said. “They started putting them on concrete floors and then eventually concrete slatted floors. And then we enclosed them in buildings. It’s environmentally controlled production. The pigs grow more efficiently, with less feed wastage and less mortality and disease, when they’re sheltered. It allows producers to walk down the aisles and make sure the feeders and the waste management systems are working, and identify pigs that look like they might be ill and treat them.”
As more producers turned to the new system, Extension devised programs to help with the transition. That included building a model farm called the swine development center at NC State’s Upper Coastal Plain Research Station in Rocky Mount.
“People would come and tour and learn about concrete slats and the equipment and technology from all over the state and around the world,” See said. “We offered the building plans through Extension. We did annual documentation of the cost of production, right down to the electricity. It fueled a lot of the progress.”
The Central Crops Research Station in Clayton also played a key role, conducting research to improve genetics.
Today, the swine industry is a high-tech business. Lamb raises his pigs in climate-controlled, tunnel ventilated barns with sensors that measure heat and humidity.
“I can see it in real time by an app on my cell phone,” he said.
Researchers are continuing to work on solutions to issues faced by the state’s swine farmers.
“Some of our programs are looking at new technologies with sensors and cameras,” See said. “Suzanne Leonard just completed a big project where she had 12 barns completely outfitted with sensors, measuring the temperature, humidity, wind flow and air quality, and also monitoring pig health, performance and behavior to try to refine and improve the environments.”
Waste management also continues to be a major focus. Mahmoud Sharara, a biological engineering specialist with NC State Extension, is conducting research into better practices for dealing with hog waste, including ways to convert it into a renewable energy source.
In the meantime, local agents like Knowles will continue to work with producers on existing methods and regulations.
“Max is really that conduit between regulatory agencies and the farmer,” Lamb said. “Farmers trust Max, they know him. He’s a neighborhood kid who grew up here. He bridges that relationship between government regulations and the farmers.”
James Lamb and NC State Extension livestock agent Max Knowles on Lamb’s hog farm in Sampson County.
There was a time when swine farms in North Carolina were lightly regulated. Not anymore.
The state requires manure to stay on the farm and not enter water. Farmers are required to sample their lagoons and spray fields to monitor the nutrients; record every irrigation event and the weather at the time; document what crop is in the spray field and crop yields; log any rain event, measured by an accurate rain gauge; and track the lagoon level, measured in inches, at least once a week.
“Swine farming in North Carolina is one of the most regulated industries in the country,” Knowles said. “Permitted farms are required to have a certified animal waste management plan where manure is applied to actively growing crops as a fertilizer resource. The crops are identified in the waste management plan and receive manure at their documented agronomic rate. You have to keep meticulous records.”
Knowles and other Extension experts are there to help farmers in their counties navigate the rules and regulations, to provide access to the latest research and advances, and to do whatever they can to help ensure the health of one of North Carolina’s most important agricultural industries.
“Extension lets us design programs to help our clientele,” Knowles said. “It’s something I really enjoy doing and it’s very fulfilling. In Sampson County, we have a sample collection day on the first Tuesday every other month. I can help farmers with the paperwork, collect the sample, and take that to Raleigh for analysis. This program was put in place by long-time Sampson County agent Dan Bailey, who worked in Extension for 37 years. I do my best to follow his example of service to our farmers.”
