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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Smithfield’s reported turnaround of the former Premium Standard Farms (PSF) operation in northern Missouri combined workforce and training changes, herd-health measures, and investment in manure management. A partnership to capture and sell renewable natural gas helped make some of that infrastructure more workable. This is a historical account of events described in a Successful Farming feature published January 4, 2018, not a report on the facilities’ current ownership or operations.
What operation did Smithfield take over?
Premium Standard Farms was a large hog enterprise in northern Missouri. Successful Farming’s 2018 account says Smithfield agreed to acquire PSF in September 2006 and completed the purchase in February 2007. The feature described the complex at the time of the purchase as having 221,000 sows across 56 sow farms spread over 600 square miles. Those are historical figures from the magazine’s account, not current operating numbers.
The feature traces PSF’s earlier history from its formation in 1988–1989 through expansion, financial strain, bankruptcy, environmental disputes, and nuisance litigation. These events were not all the same kind of legal finding: the article recounts allegations, litigation, settlements, and consent-decree requirements. They should not be collapsed into a claim that every allegation was proven in court.
In 2011, Smithfield manager Michael Rainwater was assigned to run the northern Missouri operation. The challenges he described included legal and environmental obligations, labor and training problems, animal-health issues, and aging clusters of barns. The feature’s timeline says substantially all Missouri nuisance litigation was settled in 2012–2013, followed by the Murphy-Brown of Missouri name.
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What changes did Smithfield make?
Workforce and training
Rainwater said the operation reduced what he characterized as an inflated workforce while aiming to increase the proportion of frontline employees and improve training and engagement. The feature reports four weeks of onboarding and a performance-evaluation process. It also describes farms being depopulated and later rebuilt as the team transitioned to an improved system. These are practices reported in 2018, not confirmation of current staffing levels or policies.
Herd health
The operation’s older, widely distributed barn clusters presented animal-health challenges. As described by Rainwater, management changes included adjustments to sow acclimation, reducing the number of gilt sources, limiting the number of pig sources entering grow-finish complexes, and continuing to improve biosecurity. The feature presents these as elements of the management approach; it does not isolate or measure the effect of each one.
Manure-management infrastructure
The feature says state and federal consent decrees required additional manure-management technology, including lagoon covers, barn scrapers, and advanced nitrification/denitrification (AND). Rainwater described the added requirements as a financial burden. The infrastructure also became central to a project that aimed to capture methane from manure rather than leave it unused.
How did the manure-to-gas project work?
Smithfield’s reported arrangement with Roeslein Alternative Energy connected manure-management investments with a renewable-natural-gas project. Roeslein’s company funded or installed lagoon covers and barn scrapers in exchange for rights to captured gas for a period described in the feature. The timeline places planning in the early 2010s, cover installation beginning in 2014, and purification and pipeline-injection milestones in 2016–2017.
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- Capture gas: Covers on manure lagoons collected methane produced as manure decomposed. Barn scrapers moved manure into the management system.
- Purify it: The feature says the upgrading process removed hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, and some nitric oxide. It describes pressure swing absorption at a larger operation and a membrane system as an option at a smaller farm scale.
- Send it to market: At the Ruckman farm, the article reports a pipeline connection for purified gas. Gas from other farms was transported in trailers to that connection.
The article gives approximately 1,350 standard cubic feet per minute as the reported purification and injection capability. That figure describes the project as covered in the 2018 feature; it is not a current capacity figure. Roeslein also said the gas had to meet a 98.6% methane-purity target. That was his description of the project’s gas-quality requirement, not a universal specification for every renewable-gas system.
This case does not establish a standard design for other farms. A real project would depend on its site, manure and gas volumes, permitting, pipeline access, and economics. The feature does not supply comparative cost, safety, or lifecycle data for the purification technologies it names.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What constrained the turnaround and the gas project?
Production levels could vary, changing the manure supply available to generate gas. The feature also reports that a tornado damaged finishing barns and lagoon covers. Those disruptions matter because equipment and pipeline arrangements depend on a sufficiently steady flow of manure and gas.
Roeslein discussed project returns under assumptions of steady pig flows. Those were the developer’s expectations as reported in the magazine, not independently audited results. The article does not establish realized returns or the facilities’ present-day performance.
What does this case show—and what does it not?
The article’s account suggests the operation’s reported recovery was not the result of one intervention. Workforce changes and training, herd-health practices, and manure-management investment addressed different parts of the problem. The gas partnership gave the required infrastructure an additional economic purpose, while the variation in production and tornado damage showed that the arrangement still depended on reliable operations and physical assets.
It remains a historical case study. The 2018 feature does not establish who owns or operates the facilities now, their current production, financial performance, legal obligations, or whether the described gas system remains configured or in service as reported.
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