DES MOINES, Iowa — Like most farmers at the World Pork Expo, Yaroslav Bondar was there to pick up the newest ideas about hog production.
But unlike most producers there, he’d been trying to manage tens of thousands of feeder pigs while cruise missiles slammed into nearby power plants and threw his barns into darkness for nine to 10 hours at a time.
“It’s absolutely terrible,” said Bondar about hog production realities in his home country of Ukraine, which has a large population of pork-eating consumers who rely on farms that often can’t operate their most basic powered systems.
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“We don’t have lights. The farms don’t have electricity, but you still have to run it,” said Bondar, who manages barns near the western Ukraine city of Lviv, which is far from the frontlines but where power supplies have been repeatedly targeted by Russia.
“It’s very difficult.”
But farms have to operate and people have to eat, so consumers and farmers are finding a way of getting by while the war rages.
Bondar on this morning was standing at the PIC booth at the World Pork Expo held June 7-9 in Des Moines, chatting with company representatives about their hog genetics, of which he is a fan.
“We are pleased with these genetics,” said Bondar, who was representing the Association of Ukrainian Pig Breeders at the expo.
“It is improving very much. We can see it.”
Geopolitics are no stranger to the expo. United States-China issues are always floating in the background, even while U.S. producers are enthusiastic exporters to China and Chinese hog industry suppliers have many booths at the giant hog industry show.
Mexico-U.S. issues about both hogs and crops like corn and soybeans often come up in industry discussions.
This year there was a lot of talk about attempts to establish a voluntary country-of-origin labelling scheme for pork in the U.S., something that creates Canada-U.S. tensions.
But the challenges faced by Ukrainian hog producers aren’t a traditional production situation for most of the world’s hog producers.
“We are very pleased for all the countries that have supported us,” said Bondar.
