reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
Speaker 0 and Speaker 1 discuss the decline of the hog business after years in it. They say they stayed in the pig business for years until the market was destroyed, and they got out in 1990-1995 because “you can't sell.” They note they weren’t paid for the protein they bought.
They describe a lack of profitability: “They didn't pay for the protein we bought.” They recall trying to price things, saying, “send $16 a 100 with 16¢ a pound per damn pound.” Wilbur is mentioned as someone who thought he’d get rich, but it was worthless. He bought 60-pound feeder pigs for $5 a head and sold them for 8¢ a pound, with a hog bringing “$24.35 a hog for a number one.”
They emphasize that prices never came down in the grocery store. The government is criticized for wanting consolidation and integration, aiming to “put everybody out of the hog business but the great big giant one,” akin to the chicken industry. They mention Tyson and Arkansas as players forming a large integrated system. They say, “Now they're in a the only one they ain't got integrated yet beef,” and they discuss “giner and giner ones out west with two or 3,000 brood cows” who have their own beef operations.
The speakers recount the collapse of the hog industry, noting that “there's no market slap” and that the market was destroyed. They mention a person in Geneva who bought up the biggest operations, suggesting that those who harmed others would be the next to fail, and indeed “in two years' time they were out of bed.” They recount a shift where, at one point, you could haul a few hogs to Georgia, but then Georgia closed down.
They describe packing plants: “They had a packing plant for hogs in Dothan, the first one to go, and they sold it and turned it into a chicken butchering glass.” The Sunnyland-Elba area is referenced. They say packers bought “fat sows that were already butchered by the big company,” bringing in carcasses, cutting them up one by one, which effectively eliminated the smaller operations.
Finally, they explain the geographical movement: Georgia went out of business, so they had to haul hogs to South Carolina. They could haul only a few miles in the summer, and “a few miles, you was lucky to haul them once you up there.”