The Swine Development Center is supported by the State of Mississippi Legislators. The mission of the center includes developing sustainable swine production systems for small producers; improving the quality, safety, and composition of pork products; generating information to enhance the socioeconomic wellbeing of rural communities; conducting research that addresses swine production problems; and providing hands-on undergraduate and graduate training.

The center’s farm is located at Church Hill, Mississippi. The farm is approximately 20 miles southwest of the Alcorn State University campus. The facility has 60-sow farrowing barns, three barns with a capacity to house 100 finishing hogs. The farm is surrounded by a 50-acre outdoor pasture for production of pasture-raised hogs. An Artificial Insemination (A.I.) unit with a capacity for accommodating six boars is located at the farm.

The facility includes eight individual boar stalls, a room for semen collection, connected with a state-of-the-art semen evaluation and processing laboratory. Student A.I. interns undergo training at the laboratory as certified A.I. technicians. Producers are encouraged to train and adopt A.I. technology to improve genetic quality of their stock.

Current research efforts as centered at a development pasture-based production system for limited resource farmers as well the use of under-utilized vegetables purslane and waterleaf to improve the quality of pork.