Word: duroc
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...ruthless genetic specialization, driving the industry toward what ecologists call monocultures--vast numbers of a single variety. According to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC), 15 different breeds of pigs were raised for market in the 1930s; today, six of them are extinct. Only three varieties--Hampshire, Yorkshire and Duroc--account for 75% of U.S. production. In the 1920s, some 60 breeds of chickens thrived on American farms; today one hybrid, the Cornish Rock cross, supplies nearly every supermarket. A single turkey dominates: the Broad Breasted White, a fast-growing commercial creation with such a huge breast and short legs...
...bought nearly $15,000 worth of equipment, ranging from a $2,800 John Deere tractor to a $125 mule-drawn wagon. His livestock is valued at more than $16,000 and includes 71 head of beef cattle, 30 of them fine purebred Aberdeen-Angus, plus seven registered Duroc-Jersey sows and about 80 sheep. He has won more than 170 prizes at local, county, state and national fairs and expositions. In all, Joe has complete managerial responsibility for a $49,000 farm business. His net worth is $37,000. Another statistic: he has just turned...
...tied his shoe laces, then swung off in easy, economical strides toward the neat, white smokehouse. There, ducking under three Tennessee hams and some sides of smoked fatback, he filled a five-gallon grease bucket with wheat shorts, crimped oats and water to make a slop for the four Duroc sows that were nursing their first litters in the orchard lot. To the hog troughs he took the shortest route, leading through the family cemetery behind the house. As the wire gate clicked shut behind him, Joe passed by the chest-high tombstone of his great-grandfather, Samuel Sampson Carver...
While Zoni Williamson, Joe's ancient Negro farmhand, milked some cows, Joe walked out to the farrowing barn that he built while he was still in high school. In one of the six concrete-floored stalls lay a monstrous (upwards of 600 lbs.) Duroc sow with eleven week-old pigs. She gave a grunting roar as Joe eased a trough past her jaws to the floor and filled it with slop from a bucket. Joe worked carefully, talking softly: a sow with new pigs is one of the farm's most dangerous animals, both to humans...
...tied so directly to high school vocational agriculture). Joe, at the suggestion of his 4-H supervisor, bought a black steer, fed it for five months, and took it to the Nashville Fat Cattle Show, where it did badly. Back home, determined to do better, Joe bought a registered Duroc gilt, then set out to buy some good purebred cattle. He was on his way to a career as a farmer-but a glittering alternative beckoned, just as similarly glittering alternatives have beckoned other farm boys and taken them from the country to the city...