458 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



can be more or less arbitrarily controlled to these ends, what is needed 

 is dependable information as to seasonable demands for different grades 

 of fed-cattle, accurate information as to feeding activities within the 

 corn-belt region where most of these cattle are produced, and then a 

 co-operative organization of enough of the regular feeders — enough to 

 control 65 or 75 per cent of the production — to influence the production 

 and control the distribution. 



The hog marketing problem in Iowa is a more simple one than that of 

 cattle marketing, to the extent, at least, that hog production throughout 

 the state is on a fairly uniform basis — that of fiinding a profitable home 

 market for Iowa's leading cereal, corn — and the kinds produced are of 

 much the same type, the lard hog. There are some sections, though, 

 where the production is to utilize dairy by-products, and is somewhat in- 

 fluenced by conditions in this industry, but even here the type of hog is 

 much the same and the market problem the same, although in strict 

 accounting it would probably be treated in a different manner. The 

 great bulk of the hogs are raised on the farms where fed and are fin- 

 ished on farm-raised grains with little additional expenditure for other 

 feeds. The amount of the production is influenced in part by seasonable 

 conditions, as the kind of weather prevailing during the farrowing months, 

 but largely by prices and the so-called profits of the preceding year, 

 and by the amount of the grain production. Because of the prolificacy 

 and quick growth of these animals, the supply can be rapidly increased 

 and the total numbers from year to year can show large changes. So far 

 as the average Iowa farmer is concerned, he is more interested in the 

 price of hogs than that of corn, and it is possible that he would be con- 

 sidered more as a hog raiser than a corn raiser, and that his cost-ac- 

 counting should be on the basis of hog-production rather than of grain 

 production, the corn that he sells being considered as produced jander 

 joint costs with his hogs. 



Physical conditions that control crop production and breeding practice 

 largely control the marketing of hogs. The bulk of them are spring-far- 

 rowed, and ready for market during the late fall and winter following. 

 Happily, this results in the movement to market coinciding with the sea- 

 son of the year when the consumptive demand is the greatest and thus 

 avoiding a necessity of carrying the production from the marketing to 

 the consuming season. 



The elements determining the production are so variable and so uncon- 

 trollable that there is little hope of ever bringing it under even reasonable 

 control — any more than there is of any possibility of controlling the 

 amount of corn production. And the relation between hogs and corn is 

 so close and the price of the latter is so controlled by the supplies of the 

 former, and vice versa, that no one would ever be justified in trying to 

 fix a limitation to either. We always have had, and always will have, 

 probably, the balance of prices dipping first to the corn side, and then 

 to the hog side, with no one able to say which of these is the more prof- 

 itable, or whether the total result would be much different if the tip of 

 the balance were different. This being so, the marketing problem here is 

 tc try to bring about a fairly uniform market movement of the available 



