This Little Piggy Went to Market in Mexico City
Well, not just this little piggy, but that one and that one and that one too . . . 50,000 every single week.
On our regular drives to Mexico City two hundred and fifty miles away, we pass pig truck after pig truck. It’s often made us idly speculate about what it takes to supply Mexico City with pork.
Well, in the wake of the swine flu panic, I did a bit of poking about. Here are a few figures. I’m just trying to get order of magnitude estimates here, so these are all rounded off.
Number of people living in Mexico City 20 million
Average pork consumption per week 1/2 lb
So Mexico City needs 10 million lbs of pork weekly
Dressed weight of a pig 200 lbs
In short, Mexico City eats its way through 50,000 pigs a week
50,000 pigs a week. Just think about it. Breeding them, raising them, transporting them, killing them, cutting them up, turning them into chuletas and milanesas and salchichas and carnitas and chorizo and chicharrón.
And much as Mexicans like all these porky things, they are far from being the world’s champion pork eaters. The Danes and the Spanish eat six or seven times as much per capita, the Americans three times as much, even the the Japanese eat twice as much.
Is it any wonder that pig farmers don’t have the animals roaming the fields? That pig farming is on an industrial scale? That it is big business? That the backyard pig is not the answer?
So what is the conclusion? If we want to eat pork and all the wonderful things made from pork, we are going to have to come to terms with large scale production.
More to come on this once I’ve poked about a bit more.
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I like to get the industry point of view so I have signed up for newsletters from Pork magazine.
very interesting
it is so much easier these days to breed animals and rasie crops for food than it ever was in the past, so people do just that – they over-produce.
here’s an interesting example from crete, which mirrors your own about pigs:
in the past, people produced enough olive oil for their own use. industrialisation helped them produce more than they needed, so they would sell it at high prices. then more people got in on the act – they cleared scrub land and turned it into olive groves, with the result now that there is too much olive oil being produced in crete, and the price dropped to the buying price of 1.45 euro a litre (when it used to be sold for gold at the equivalent of 6 euro including the subsidies farmers used to get for it).
farmers are now complaining about the low price – it all goes back to the non-sustainability of the small farm which you’ve mentioned a number of times in your posts…
Thanks for the comment Maria. But I’m not entirely clear about the point about over-production. I’m concentrating on the consumption end. And in world terms, Mexican consumption of pork is far from excessive. But even that level puts huge demands on production, demands that seem unlikely to be met by small farms.
I wish I knew more about the economics of farming to be able to challenge your assertions that small farms are not practical. Perhaps I will have to do some more reading and investigation around this :-)
Because it seems to me that the price we pay for industrial systems of food production is very, very high…. at times, (not always) poor quality tasteless, unhealthy food……large food-processing companies dominating markets…….terrible environmental damage (monocultures, use of chemicals, destruction of habitats, soil depletion and erosion, deforestation etc) to the point where I’m not sure these methods are sustainable anymore…….horrific conditions (at times) for animals………and now we have evidence that industrial systems of pork and chicken production might be breeding grounds for diseases (witness the link of the outbreak of influenza AH1N1 with Granja Carroll, a subsidiary of the US company Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, in the community of la Gloria)
http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=642
I know this article is a little out of date now (a week is a long time in a swine flu pandemic) but i think the key points are still valid.
Hi Paul, Any comments on farming welcome.
Suppose I said: We have paid a very high price for small farms. Unhealthy food, adulterated milk, sky high prices and inefficient marketing, terrible environmental damage (over grazing, destruction of habitats, soil depletion and erosion, deforestation, etc) plus horrific conditions for animals. I think that would also be a true statement.
As you can imagine I am firing up for a defense of Confined Animal Feeding a la Veracruz.
yes, i realise your point was different – the comment you made about seeing pig truck after pig truck on the road made me think about what kind of road traffic a visitor might encounter in crete, and how they would interpret such a regular sight
it reminded me of what happens during the winter – every morning and every afternoon, you’ll see pick-up truck after pick-up truck carting the same equipment in the carriage – and i wondered how easily people might have gone about doing this sort of work in the past, when most didn’t even own a truck, let alone a car
(i’m doing a post about over-production and i will be linking up to this one)
Fascinating about the pick ups–I imagine the equipment is oil crushing machinery, right?
Looking forward to the post on over-production.
50,000 pigs for 20 million people is surprisingly modest, a few bangers per person.
I guess there is also a question of what intensive farming actually means in this context. Does it mean farrowing crates, totally shed reared and concrete floors or is there out door roaming? A large percentage of the UK commercial herd lives out side for part of their life, in commercial herds, not backyard pigs. In some climates (Australia) this is much more difficult to achieve, due to heat and sunburn mostly.
Regarding boutique v industrial farming, I guess that it is a question of what people have to pay. What is the average household income for an average family in Mexico city?
It is. I was surprised, given how pork is so popular in Mexico, how per capita consumption is still so low. So much consumption remains eked out with tortillas is, I think, the answer. And you are so right about trying to get precise about what intensive pig farming actually means. I think the commercial herd here is indoors almost all the time for many of the same reasons as in Australia. Per capita income in Mexico City? I’ll have to check that.
Rachel
I don’t think small farms have done the same kind of environmental damage, because large farms, through their industrial organization and greater size, just have more capacity and power to do this.
Perhaps the debate should not be large farms vs small farms, but what kinds of agricultural practice create healthy food and are sustainable for the planet?
Paul, I’m not sure that will work for the simple reasons that lots and lots of little farms can do just the same damage as one big one.
On the second point, I could not agree more. I’d phrase it differently though. The size of the farm has to be appropriate to farming methods and plants or animals farmed.
By the way, I don’t think we have a good grip on what is or is not sustainable. Another post?
Well Mexico City is only just about 1/5 of the population in Mexico. thus 100 million need 275,000 piggies per week.
I now live in China with a population of 1,300 million where the average consuption is .75 kg/person per week………or about over 5,500,000 pigs per week.
I had planned to go to Mexico to finalize my taxes but have delayed that until June because of the hype over the “piggy” flu. I am sure Hacienda will still charge me a large multa for being late…….everyone is paying for this over reaction
Sobering thoughts Dennis. Nothing like a few numbers to wake one up from agrarian dreams.
We did our Mexican taxes on line this year or rather our lovely young lady accountant did them that way. Is this a possibility for you?
World Bank puts per capita income for Mexico (country) at US$10,000 (purchasing parity value) for 2008. However, it also states that 20% of the population lives on less than US$2 per day. That that would put a very strange skew to the median line.
Indeed, though perhaps not so strange for Latin America. Not good though.
Interesting stats on pigs. Are you sure about the 200lbs number? An average human being doesn’t weigh that much.
Enjoyed your post on Twitter. I have to try taking that seriously.
Thanks Rachel. I did them on line last year but since my CIEL ( electronic signature) expired I need to come in personally to get a new one. The problem was my FM3 expired and I no longer had a residence since I left Mexico Dec 31, 2008. The solution to get a new CIEL: easy: Get a new rental agreement and get a new FM3 even though I no longer live in Mexico. My FM3 etc is ready now but I have exceeeded the limit for my salida y regressa. When I come back to finalize everything I will have another multa for that…….just blame it on the flu LOL
Dennis
What a monumental pain.
A full grown adult commercial pig would easily weigh more then a human (depending on breed). Bacon pigs are usually 65-85 kg dressed weight. Final size of a pork pig tends to reflect the market choice, in countries where pork is the “other white meat”, then they will be killed younger, then in more traditional markets.
Thanks for that amplification Adam.
Mexico problems could be solved if the go the way of the Flemish..
http://www.theage.com.au/world/a-meatfree-revolution-to-help-save-the-planet-20090514-b4pq.html
It’s coming!