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: Stress as a Nutrient Thief - Dr. Sarah Pearce

In this episode of The Swine Nutrition Blackbelt Podcast, Dr. Sarah Pearce, Research Animal Physiologist with USDA ARS, explains why stress can act as a nutrient thief in pigs. She discusses gastrointestinal health, barrier integrity, inflammation, feed efficiency, stress interactions, and emerging biomarkers that may help predict performance challenges before they occur. Listen now on all major platforms!

Click here to read the full research article: https://academic.oup.com/af/article/1...

"Stress can steal calories and nutrients because energy normally used for growth is redirected toward immune activation, gut repair, and other costly survival responses."

Meet the guest: Dr. Sarah Pearce / sarah-pearce-phd-3a5881a5 earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from Iowa State University and currently serves as a Research Animal Physiologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. Her research focuses on gastrointestinal physiology, nutrition, stress biology, immune function, and productivity in pigs and poultry. Learn more from Dr. Sarah Pearce on the Swine Nutrition Black Belt Podcast, available on all major platforms.