This is mostly just my opinion so take it at that, nothing more.


Larger sow units that have a history of good production will continue to have value.    Production is everything and larger sow units (5000+) are able to produce pigs cheaper through labor efficiencies that they have over small units.    Those older small (1200-1500 hd) units likely have a future of being turned into finishing sites or if the site is good enough they may be expanded.   They don't produce big enough groups of pigs to fill finishing sites quickly and efficiently + they have to have too many employees for the number of animals.


FWIW, in the past year there has been 2 local sow units that were formally managed by the Pipestone System that were sold to larger integrators. One is a 5000 sow unit that was sold to Seaboard and the other one I think is a 2500 and I believe that one was sold to Christensens (not 100% sure on that).     From what I've heard the Triumph group is very actively trying to expand in this area and it was an opportunity for those shareholders that were nearing retirement to sell out.   The ones that wanted to continue owning sows moved into different sow units.

Also FWIW, I wouldn't want to own shares in a sow unit in this area.    The amount of hogs in this area pose far too much disease pressure to keep a sow herd healthy, filtered sow units break with PRRS regularly.  You don't have to go but a couple hrs W/N/NW of here to get away from hogs far enough to have very little disease pressure.
From what I've heard, that was also a consideration for the units that were sold.

I think further consolidation is almost a given.   Everyone that stays in the industry will continue to get bigger either through growth or acquisitions.     More vertical integration is also a given and it won't just be the big boys doing so, Triumph has a model that works.