Showing posts with label hogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hogs. Show all posts

Thursday, December 10, 2020

World's Largest Pig Farm

The world's largest pig farm is being constructed in China and is projected to produce around 2.1 million hogs per year. With this come challenges and opportunities. We encourage you to explore the linked article and utilize the discussion points below to guide your conversations around the globe.

Chinese Hog Producer Builds World's Largest Pig Farm

Discussion Points

  • What factors have contributed to producers in China building larger and larger pig farms?
  • What in the article surprised you and why?
  • Identify the opportunities and challenges that are being created by these larger and larger operations.
  • How might this farm and trend impact hog producers in your local area as well as others around the world?

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Farming in the Sky

Urban farming is gaining momentum across the globe and this is evident in the Netherlands which now claims fame to the largest urban farm in Europe. Urban Farmers, the company behind this urban farm, hope to provide 900 families along with local restaurants and a cooking school with vegetables and fish. Read the linked article below detailing this project and utilize the discussion points provided to create conversations in your classrooms and communities.

Greenhouse in the Sky

Discussion Points

  • Why is there a demand for urban farms like this around the world? 
  • Why is there great potential to replicate this type of production?
  • Explain the aquaponics system explained in this article and the efficiency that it brings.
  • Do you see something like this taking off in your local community? Explain.
  • Discuss the proposal by a hog farmer to integrate hog production into the urban scene? Do you think one day this will be accomplished? Explain.
  • Is urban farming a fad? React to the following statement from the article: “I always refer to the debates about parks in the city in the past. I think in 100 years, urban agriculture will be as normal as the city parks we have today.”

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Goats to Guano

Our time is flying by in Haiti! Hard to believe that we only have one full day left in Haiti. We started off our day by returning to our energetic 5th and 6th graders to elaborate on our agriculture lesson from the day before. After further discussion we had the students build an agriculture chain. Students had to write agriculture facts on strips of paper and hook them together to make a chain that we hung around the classrooms.

Next we made our way to the university where we spent much of the morning discussing livestock production focusing on hogs and dairy goats with a little bit of chicken production. There was discussion on all aspects of production from breeding to meat production. The students had many questions for us and we're very appreciative of all that our students shared with them. 


Following lunch we had brief English lessons with the 3rd and 4th graders before we met back up with the university students. They took us to their goat production area where most goats are Alpines or have some Alpine blood in them. We covered topics from feeding to health. We discovered they battle many of the same issues we do in the United States such as mastitis. We were shown an interesting way of checking pregnancy as well. 

After our time with the goats we hiked to a cave where guano is collected for use as fertilizer. This was a great workout and many enjoyed exploring the cave. We then returned to campus where we attended a Wednesday night church service before meeting around our favorite tree to plan our lessons for Thursday. It is great to see the magnitude of learning taking place by both sides, Hatians and Americans!