OCR Text |
Show ;!.MXfiiK j 31 fornia is strictly on an import .' so far as the hog business is con 1 ed. There are now 50 per centj1 hogs in the state than in 1920 a c the meantime, the state's popu;: lias doubled. f,j There is no danger of eversc-: ing the California market with t 'T produced hogs and we should kt mind the big export market for J and lard, which might well be ccy ed from Pacific Coast ports. year's export of lard and pork, ; ly in the form of hams and t j from the United States amount.. 801 million pounds, or the equr, 0 of 8,500,000 hogs at Chicago av;y weights. Of these 800 million pc i 30 million pounds went to A; J l Hawaii and Porto Rico, all react n less transportation cost from lei Coast ports. Lard and pork a'ts poptilar in Mexico and the expo.-: mand from the Orient and America could easily be en! ,0- j were a Pacific Coast supply ava: i Over-production of many o!cj stable western crops, such as 6 ous fruits, grapes, raisins, pt; ' pears, some nuts and a world of products, is giving Western a? If ... .i " "J turists something to worry over. this same land could well be in; profitably produce some crop3 -are greatly underproduced ca alfalfa, feeds and pork. It ? 1 cerUinly seem worth while fo:'6 educational and economic agenc'D the Western states to give vei7jj ous thought to making a eoz survey of the hog and pork si'.;;7 including such items as cost duction, available feeds, preser. future domestic and export inland inl-and practically, the type qualit; weight of hog needed for Pacific requirements. 16 r i 11 There seems to be quite a general 1' opinion that pork is not as popular ' a meat food in Southern California as in some of the colder climates and there is an inclination to offer this as a reason for limited hog production , in 'the Western states. However, such I is not the case, by any means. Last . I year, meat packers and distributors in Los Angeles county slaughtered j, C07,000 hogs, virtually all of which was converted into fresh meat trade, i The product from at least half that ' number of hogs was shipped into I Southern California in the form of j hams and bacons, smoked and in brine. This would make an equivalent equiva-lent of more than 1,000,000 hogs, out of which conies something like 136,-000,000 136,-000,000 pounds of pork, figuring the, average pork carcass to weigh 130 pounds. The population served by these packers numbers something less than 2,000,000, making a per capita pork consumption in Los Angeles county last year of around 68 pound. This compares with the national na-tional per capita consumption of pork in 1928 of 73.9 pounds and the 1927 per capita consumption of 68.5: pounds. In California as a whole, it is estimated that about 300,000,000! pounds of pork is consumed, which would make the ner capita consumption consump-tion in this state just slightly less J than over the country as a whole. Of j the 2,250,000 hogs needed to appease! the pork appetite of Californians, it is safe to assume that less than 50 per cent are produced in California, Arizona, Ari-zona, Nevada, Utah and Idaho, the states which now supply practically the entire beef, lamb and mutton requirements re-quirements for California markets. Instead, California spends many millions mill-ions of dollars annually for hogs which are produced in Nebraska, Colorado, Col-orado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and as far east as Iowa and Missouri. It must be borne in mind that Cali- |