Upscale Pork Markets for Small-Scale Hog Producers

Abstract

Thank you for inviting me, I appreciate the opportunity to come down here. I want to talk to you today about a project we have begun with Niman Ranch Pork Company, a cooperative of 200 small-scale producers in the Midwest. Paul Willis is the president, and he started it just three years ago. At that time they had over 100 producers, and now they have 200 producers. This project is in collaboration with NCDA, NCSU, the North Carolina Rural Farms Coalition, Heifer Project International, and the Niman Ranch Pork Company. I became associated with them last year, and we are now shipping about 30 hogs a week to Niman Ranch's parent company out in California. What we are trying to do here is re-vitalize the small-scale hog industry in North Carolina, primarily for food security reasons, but also to address some of the issues that the corporate confinement units are currently facing-mainly animal welfare issues, environmental issues, and the feeding of sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics.