Oklahoma donates 300 hogs to Pork for Packs program

May 29, 2023

The Oklahoma Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture recognised more than 140 Oklahoma FFA chapters for donating to the foundation’s Pork for Packs program as a part of the 2022-2023 Oklahoma FFA Hunger Challenge, according to a press release from the foundation.

A total of $13,297 and 310 hogs were donated to the program throughout the school year.

Pork for Packs – a collaboration between the OKFB Foundation for Agriculture, the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma and the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma – provides protein sticks for chronically hungry children in Oklahoma. The protein sticks are included in food-filled backpacks given to students to eat during weekends and holidays, when meals at school are not available.

The monetary and in-kind donations were able to produce 496,000 protein sticks for hungry children across Oklahoma.

The FFA Hunger Challenge encourages students to donate their animals to the program during the Tulsa State Fair and the Oklahoma Youth Expo. Chapters can also make cash contributions through adding a quarter to the price of each fundraising product sold throughout the year.

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Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment