INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.—Joe Tinsman’s family got into the pork business about 10 years ago, more as an avocation than an industry.
“It started with the kids showing pigs in 4-H. We figured we could raise them for less than we could buy them,” Tinsman told The Epoch Times.
The Tinsmans, appropriately enough, live in Farmland, Indiana. They’re first-generation pork producers and are small by design, between 40 and 50 head at a time.
Like many family farmers, Tinsman works another full-time job in addition to their farm, so the specter of California’s Proposition 12 tended to be theoretical, but still unsettling.
“The cost of it would take you out,” Tinsman said. “You would need more ground, more space in buildings. There’s no way to make that happen. There would be multiple farmers in the same situation.”…