Put yourselves in their shoes

Sep 18, 2023

For Cactus Family Farms, today’s farm employee stems from one of two main groups. The first being the local employees near their headquarters in Osceola, Iowa. According to HR Specialist Heather Vaughn, 80% of those local applicants are Hispanic. They often have little formal education or prior experience with pigs and sometimes speak traditional indigenous languages as well as Spanish.

The other side of that coin is a completely different pool of applicants. Through the North American Free Trade Agreement, they also have the option to hire employees with a TN visa. For this specific visa, applicants must either be from Canada or Mexico, however Vaughn says that the agriculture industry primarily relies on Mexican candidates.

Another specification to the TN visa is that they have to have some level of an advanced degree.

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Video: What Happens When Pigs Adapt to High Soybean Meal Diets? - Gustavo Lima

In this special rerun episode of The Swine Nutrition Blackbelt Podcast, Gustavo Lima, PhD candidate in Animal Science at Iowa State University, discusses how grow-finish pigs respond to high soybean meal diets. He explains the initial drop in feed intake, changes in backfat, later adaptation, energy efficiency, amino acid utilization, and the rise in nitrogen excretion at higher inclusion levels. Listen now on all major platforms!

Click here to read the full research article: https://academic.oup.com/jas/article/...

“Once they got adapted to the diet, they can handle higher levels of inclusion of soybean meal.”

Meet the guest: Gustavo Lima / gustavo-lima-a9867127 is a PhD candidate in Animal Science at Iowa State University whose work focuses on swine nutrition, ingredient characterization, energy metabolism, caloric efficiency, and applied data analysis. With more than 15 years of experience in swine production across Latin America, Gustavo also brings expertise in environmental control, performance evaluation, barn ventilation, and grow-finish housing. Learn more from Gustavo Lima on The Swine Nutrition Blackbelt Podcast, available on all major platforms.