3 Pork Issues No One is Talking About

No one can deny there’s a lot to talk about in the pork industry today, including margin volatility, labor, and meat quality improvement and innovation.
No one can deny there’s a lot to talk about in the pork industry today, including margin volatility, labor, and meat quality improvement and innovation.
(Farm Journal)

No one can deny there’s a lot to talk about in the pork industry today — from Proposition 12 to the pork line speed ruling to high feed costs. To kick off World Pork Expo, three industry-leading producers share their thoughts on the top issues facing pork producers right now:

1. Margin volatility – or the lack of stability.

“For the past several years, the swings in the industry have got a bit more aggressive. There are lots of reasons for this – starting with one in every three pigs in the U.S. is exported, labor shortages and increased health challenges across every system. Not to mention, we recently learned with cyberattacks, and reinforced by COVID, our supply chain potentially has some holes in it,” says Clint Schwab, vice president of science technology for Maschhoffs in Carlisle, Ill.

But at the end of the day, Schwab is concerned about where capital is going.

“If you look at the industry from an outside perspective, and if you were looking to invest your capital in animal ag, and particularly the swine industry, you’d notice it’s capital intensive with fairly low margins and a whole bunch of volatility and risk. It requires us to be long-term and very patient investors,” Schwab says. “As a result, you wonder where we are going to be able to fund the innovation that needs to happen in the industry, especially when you think about some of the platform-based innovation that helps us manage risk in the long term. That’s something we need to solve as an industry to try to add stability, and link up the supply chain in a way that helps us manage risk.”

Historically, each step in the chain has focused on maximizing their specific value but the time has come to collaborate, says Mike Paustian, an independent farrow-to-finish producer from Walcott, Iowa, who’s currently serving as the past president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association.

“There are a lot of opportunities for collaboration and to change that conversation to how each of us add value along the way, so we all come out further ahead in the end,” he says. “But those are tough conversations, especially when we have decades-long, entrenched opinions and relationships among producers, packers and retailers. It would be good if we could start to think out of the box and think about how we can reset some of those relationships. When everybody is in survival mode, they’re less likely to invest in innovation and their operation. More stability would certainly accelerate the pace of people willing to try new things in their operations.”

When you look at the stress points in the industry, Schwab recognizes it’s easy at times to sound like a glass-half-empty kind of person.

“I think a lot of the challenges we have in the industry represent opportunities as well,” he says. “If we can solve even a small portion of these challenges and start to work on them collaboratively, we can make a whole bunch of progress throughout the entire supply chain, whether you look at it from a cost efficiency standpoint or starting to explore some of the value-add opportunities.”

2. Labor.

To move forward you must have great labor, says Jen Sorensen, the communications director with Iowa Select farms in West Des Moines, Iowa, and the president of the National Pork Producers Council.

“As production leaders and innovators charged with driving companies forward, if you're spending most of your time focused and stressed out about how to staff farms, how to get sows bred and pigs farrowed, you’re not allowing yourself the time to innovate and drive the business forward,” she says.

When it comes to labor, Sorensen adds, we must get to a place where we have a stabilized workforce. From a policy perspective, she points to using the H-2A program and the TN Visa program. She also says it’s important to tap into different labor pools and make the jobs more appealing. For example:

  • The industry needs to do a better job bringing enthusiastic youth who show pigs to the commercial side and breaking down barriers to make that happen.
  • A lot of farm kids would rather drive a sprayer for the co-op then work with pigs. They make that decision because they think raising pigs is labor intensive, she says. “Yes, it takes a lot of work, but the work is different – it takes as much brain power as it does muscle power these days,” Sorensen adds.
  • She questions if the industry does a good enough job of connecting people to the higher purpose, such as growing rural communities, feeding the world and creating better consumer experiences. “There are ways we can pull on their heartstrings to get them connected to what we do,” Sorensen says. “If we keep that front of mind when we work on our talent pipelines that’s one way we can refresh our approach.” • There are lots of jobs in our industry that don’t involve being in a barn taking care of pigs, so it’s important to raise awareness about meat scientists, geneticists, industrial engineers and other positions in the industry.
  • The industry needs to do a better job of appealing to lifestyle and schedule choices. How many parents think working at a sow farm seems like a good fit if they must leave their phone in your car and work eight or nine hours or more at a labor-intensive job? “Maybe we have to look at ourselves differently and say, how do we become better more flexible employers,” she says.

3. Meat quality improvement and innovation.

“We can all agree we want the consumer to have a good eating experience every time they have pork,” Paustian says. “We know from the past the consumer wanted a leaner product, so we provided a leaner product. The industry certainly has shown it can rally around and produce a product the consumer says they want.”

When it comes to the meat quality discussion, though, there are a few things that muddy the waters. First, what’s the appropriate measure of meat quality? Is it pH? Is it color? Is it tenderness? And how can the industry measure and track quality?

Additional questions revolve around: Is a producer going to be paid a premium based on the animals they provide? Is the packer going to sort out what they have coming through their line? Are there certain production practices or genetics that could cause production to lag but produce a superior product? Who's going to bear that cost? Is it going to be passed down the chain to the consumer? Who’s going to pay more for a premium product? Or will it be mandated producers have to provide meat at a minimum standard or they won't be able to sell their animals?

“Those are the questions giving a lot of people heartburn, and, unfortunately, it's holding our industry back because we aren’t having the conversations that have the potential to move our entire industry forward,” Paustian says.

Which brings the conversation back to communication and collaboration among the different sectors of the supply chain.

“I wish I had a magic wand I could wave and come up with answers,” he says. “But it’s going to take a lot of hard work, open minds and willingness to have some conversations about what if we did this? What if we tried this? It can be scary, but those kinds of conversation are what it’s going to take to move the industry forward.”

The panel also discussed fast-evolving viruses, and why the industry needs to pay attention, and traceability, particularly how to embrace it because it’s not going away. Click here to listen to the full Farm Country Update webinar.

 

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