A sow lounges on her side in a dusty hollow she’s dug for herself. A few piglets nestle up to her belly for a quick snack while the rest of her litter capers around her.
She and her neighbour sows are too big to escape their electric-fenced pastures, but the piglets are not. Gangs of little pink porkers race through the double row of poplars that shade their huts.
Farmer Brian Holm leans against one of these metal, tent-like huts as he speaks with journalists, who are there on a tour with the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. He and his wife, Ingeborg, farm in the lower Jutland peninsula of Denmark, but their organic pork has a much farther reach.
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While the Holms both grew up as farm kids, life took them away from the land. Brian worked for a feed company and Ingeborg was a nurse.
They moved back to the countryside to give their kids the same opportunities they’d had growing up — space, forests and freedom.
It was “almost too nice,” to be there, Brian recalled. They didn’t want to leave for work.
Ingeborg began a 6,000-layer egg farm while he began a 60-sow hog operation. Then they could stay home, work on the farm and take care of their family.
In 1990s Denmark, organic farming was the domain of people “like us, long hair and sitting around in a group and smoking a pipe,” said Brian. “A special pipe.”
Antibiotic-free feed for the pigs was hard to find, as was somewhere to sell organic pigs. They found a buyer in England and they were in business.
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Pigs in trees
Today, the Holms sell pigs to Friland, an organic offshoot of packing giant Danish Crown.
Friland requires all organic pigs to be born in “pig shelters in open fields,” according to the company’s website. Sows must be free range.
The farm has 600 sows and raises 12,000 market pigs each year. The sows each farrow in their own metal, slant-walled hut. Each sow also has its own strip of pasture.
When the piglets are born, they’re kept in the hut with a sill across the bottom of the door. Once they’re big enough to hop over the barrier, the sill is removed, and the piglets can roam freely.
The Holms added one more feature — trees.
Brian would like to say he planted trees because of the environment and carbon sequestration but “in fact, it was just luck.”
They used to run their hens outside among trees and the hens liked it. They realized, the pigs, which in the wild would live in or near forests, would also benefit from trees.
The sows like to root among the trees and rub on them and they also appear to enjoy the shade. In turn, the trees take up nutrients from the manure and reduce leaching. Some of those nutrients are returned when the leaves fall.
Over several years, the Holms planted nearly 50 acres of poplar trees on 210 acres of field.
“That’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” Brian said.
The poplars divide the fields into strips of pasture for the sows. Each time the sows are ready to farrow, they’re put on a clean strip of land.
The ‘used’ strips are tilled and planted to crops. While this utilizes the hog manure for fertilizer, it’s not spread evenly across the pasture, Holm said. The pigs pick their favourite pooping spots.
“I don’t know why, but they would like to be on toilet together.”
They also add 22 to 36 pounds per acre of nitrogen.
The piglets are weaned at eight weeks. They stay in the familiar pasture environment, and the sows return to their own, free-range area before they’re bred.
Once the weanlings reach 45 to 60 kg, they’re finished in a barn, which also has outdoor access, though not on grass.
Pros and cons
When the Holms started farming, organic was the domain of hippies. Not so anymore.
Danes buy the largest share of organic groceries as a percentage of total sales in the world according to Organic Denmark’s website. In 2020 nearly 13 per cent of groceries bought were organic.
Danish farmers produce a bit too much organic pork, Brian Holm told journalists, which has lowered prices.
Friland has carved additional market share by selling to the United States. About 95 per cent of the Holms’ pork goes to the U.S.
Selling to the States has required additional adaptation, such as slightly larger housing, replacing fish meal with plant proteins and going completely antibiotic free. (Holm treats pigs with antibiotics if necessary but doesn’t sell these to the U.S. market).
With the additional costs of organic farming, higher prices for the hogs means profit margins are about the same as those of a conventional pig farm, Holm said.
Still, there are benefits. The pigs are vigorous and rarely sick, he said.
For some workers, the outdoor environment is a respite from conventional farming.
“If you come from an indoor stable [barn] and you are tired of dust and noise, there’s not much noise here,” Holm said. “If you are tired of this, then this is paradise.”
