Showpiece of slurry storage

摘要

New feed bins shining in the sunlight give the first visible sign of a refit to a farm in the north of Poland that used to hold a farrow-to-finish enterprise of 1200 sows. In its latest guise the unit's housing has been converted to hold a 400-sow nucleus plus 4000 multiplication-level sows and their progeny up to weaning, as a breeding base for the gilts needed by the Polish pork production ventures associated with Smithfield Foods. Production manager Marek Tosik is himself a graduate of Smithfield's US academy -- he spent 4 years, in the USA running a 600-boar stud for the group's Murphy Farms operation before returning to Poland to take charge of the remodelled Zensko farm near the township of Walcz. Reporting that almost US2 million dollar in total or about US500 dollar per sow has been spent on converting the buildings of the ex-state farm, Marek notes that this included the equivalent of US140 000 dollar expenditure to create the unit's new lagoon for slurry storage.