Hoops: The Iowa-Ukraine Connection

Hoops galore!

Each year the Ukrainian company Agro-Soyuz raises 160,000 feeder pigs to market weight in 225 hoop barns. When company owners Volodymyr Khorishko and his son Dmytro took over a former farm collective in 2004, they sought assistance from Iowa State University’s “Hoop Group” to set up the low-cost hooped buildings.

The father-son duo returned to the United States in April 2012 to get advice on their next phase: hoops for gestating sows and baby pigs. They stopped in Ames recently to visit with members of the team, Mark Honeyman and Pete Lammers. They also went to North Carolina, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Morris, Minnesota.

Currently, the company raises about 275 pigs in every barn. The hooped structures are low-cost to build and have no exterior source of heat (even during below-zero Ukraine winters). Bedding is required in the hoop barns and in the Ukraine wheat straw is plentiful.

The Leopold Center supported the Hoop Group by providing an annual stipend for meetings and funds to conduct research between 1997 and 2002. Research expanded under a special USDA grant until 2006 and continues in various forms today, such as feeding beef cattle in hoop barns and niche pork production.

The Center continues to be supportive of alternative livestock production systems. A new research grant will explore the use of insulated tents (or yurts) for sows and pigs.

Honeyman is interim director for the Leopold Center and coordinator of ISU’s Research and Demonstration Farms. Honeyman was part of the Hoop Group and advisor to Lammers while a graduate student at ISU. Lammers continues to coordinate the Pork Niche Market Working Group and will be teaching at Illinois State University at Normal in the fall.

Top photo: View of the Agro-Soyuz hoop complex in one of six villages in  the Ukraine region of Dnipropetrovsk.

Second photo: Honeyman (left, top) and Lammers (left, bottom) meet with Khorishko (right, top) and his son recently in Curtiss Hall.

Third photo: A look inside one of the colorful Agro-Soyuz hoops. When they were unable to find a hoop barn made in Europe, the company set up its own manufacturing division, importing the cover fabric from Canada. Now they sell hoops to other buyers and offer training on how to manage livestock in hoops.

Bottom photo: The company operates several enterprises, including ostrich meat production. They also have a dairy farm and a conference-training center (both inside hoop barns). The company employs about 2,000 people, of which 70 are in the pig sector.