Opinion editor’s note: This is the second in a four-part series of columns about the impact of federal decisions on agriculture, with a focus on one particular Minnesota farm family, the Johnsons. Future installments are anticipated during the harvest and at the year’s end. Read the first installment here.
KENYON, Minn. — Ben Johnson knows the moment he sets foot inside his family’s pig “nursery” in the morning whether chores will go easy or hard.
Ben’s workday revolves around his caretaking responsibilities at two barns housing 7,000 young pigs. The animals arrive by truck when they’re around 21 days old, weighing between 12 and 14 pounds. When they leave in a matter of weeks and head to a finishing facility, they’ll weigh an average of 55 pounds, before reaching a market weight of 285 pounds.
Their stay at the Johnson farm is a critical stop in that journey. Here, they’re kept warm and safe at this vulnerable stage, with temperature, feed and water controlled by a phone app. The sounds they make on Ben’s arrival speak volumes. Healthy pigs are noisy and on the move. Sick ones are quiet. “A good day is when you slam the door closed and hear them running around, bumping into the walls and gates. They’re active, feeling good, they’re curious, they’re paying attention,” he said.
Today, all is well as Ben and his son, Frederick, 12, climb into the dozens of pens that run the length of the main 102-by-142-foot barn, checking equipment and each resident’s health. Even the situation in the “hospital pen” is promising, with a porcine patient admitted for lameness recovering nicely.
Frederick checks on the pigs in one of his dad’s barns. These pigs each weigh around 45 pounds and eat two pounds of feed each day. (Glen Stubbe/For the Minnesota Star Tribune)
Clean, modern and large facilities like this make Minnesota an agricultural powerhouse and pork a vital component in the state’s economic engine. Minnesota is the fourth-largest agricultural exporting state. It ranks second nationally in hog production and second in pork exports. That success is why the state has so much riding on the outcome of President Donald Trump’s breathtakingly ambitious effort to use a big controversial stick — tariffs — to renegotiate trade deals with most of the world.
While a federal appeals court ruling declared many of the president’s tariffs illegal on Aug. 29, Trump isn’t likely to back away from his signature policy and has other options to pursue it. These include appealing to a U.S. Supreme Court with an expansive view of presidential authority. Or asking the Republican-controlled Congress to authorize the import taxes Trump seeks.