Greg Gunthorp - LaGrange,
Indiana
Greg Gunthorp was raised on a farm only
a mile from where he now lives with his wife,
Lei, and their three young children. He owns
65 acres and uses about 65 acres of his parents'
farm.
Gunthorp's pigs farrow in his fields, graze
year round on pastures sown in wheat, clover,
rye, and various grasses, and harvest their
own corn. Gunthorp allows them to root through
the stalks after the harvest on his father's
farm. During the deepest part of winter,
he adds hay and a corn-and-soybean feed to
their diet.
The Gunthorps' chickens are housed in up
to 20 shelters that offer outside access.
Gunthorp rotates his flocks from shelter
to shelter to spread manure and minimize
the birds' impact in any given area.
After perfecting his rotational grazing
system, he turned to marketing. Now, "I
spend more time marketing than I do farming," he
says.
Meeting and getting to know the chefs at
the best restaurants in Chicago is a major
focus of his work. Gunthorp travels more
than 100 miles to the city at least once
a week to talk with chefs in their kitchens.
"Chefs appreciate how food is supposed
to taste," he says. "They know
how much flavor has been lost when producers
grow anything, animal or vegetable, for a
certain look or a certain weight, or for
its ability to be packed conveniently, instead
of for its best taste."
He also sells his pork and poultry at a
popular farmers' market in Chicago. Gunthorp
takes advantage of the crowds at the market
to promote his burgeoning catering business.
Profitability
It costs Gunthorp an average of 30 cents
per pound to raise a hog to maturity. He
sells pork from between $2 per pound to $7
per pound for suckling pigs. Overall, Gunthorp's
prices average 10 times what hogs fetch on
the commodities market. The Gunthorps sell
between 7,000 and 8,000 chickens and ducks
at $2 per pound.
Environmental Strategies
Gunthorp's hogs and chickens are free ranging.
They have access to shelter and feed during
bad weather, but spend most of their time
foraging. As a result—and in marked
contrast to conventional practices of raising
hundreds and even thousands of animals at
a time in confinement—Gunthorp experiences
few of the manure disposal, disease, aggression
and feeding difficulties that go along with
more conventional methods.
Gunthorp also notes that he uses less energy
and releases a lot less engine exhaust into
the atmosphere as a pastured pork producer,
because he doesn't use a combine to harvest
grain, or trucks to haul the grain to storage,
or huge fans and gas dryers to remove moisture
from the feed. His hogs just knock down the
corn once he lets them in his fields, where
they eat stalk and all.
Community, Outreach, Quality of Life
Gunthorp participated on the USDA's Small
Farm Commission, serving as an adviser to
former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.
He is proud to say he is making enough money
to keep his family healthy and happy. "We
can get by just selling 1,000 pigs a year,
and the smarter I can get at raising them
and selling them, the better off we'll be," Gunthorp
says.
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