No matter where you travel across the U.S., pork producers across the country just weathered an extremely heavy storm. High costs and low pork prices meant some pork producers suffered the steepest losses on record last year.
“The last two years was the toughest two-year stretch I’ve ever gone through my life. The financial losses were terrible,” says Al Wulfekuhle, a pork producer in Quasqueton, Iowa.
Wulfekuhle has raised pigs in northeast Iowa for more than 30 years, and he says they’ve been in survival mode the past two years.
“We’ve been in tough times before in my lifetime. I went through a 1998 when we had a packer capacity store shortage, and I went through other times, too. But it’s kind of survival, and then you look forward to better days,” he says.
Better days is exactly what Wulfekuhle and other pork board members are working to create.
“It really just emphasizes the importance of demand,” says Bob Ruth, outgoing president of National Pork Board (NPB) who lives in Pennsylvania. “I joined the Pork Board with a demand platform. One of the wise guy once told me, ‘I don’t care how cheap you can raise pork, if you can’t sell it, it doesn’t do you a bit of good.’ And that’s been our problem in pork, we have not done a great job of building demand.”
Ruth says it’s a pivotal moment for the pork industry, and one that could really drive demand.
“We’ve not asked our consumer about their habits. And so, you know, to learn was just really important for me, as a leader, and as a producer to understand,” says Ruth.
Who’s Eating (And Not Eating) Pork
In order to better understand consumers, the National Pork Board launched a segmentation study to see who’s eating or not eating pork and why.
“When you look at the biggest challenge today around pork, it really is centered around one word, relevancy. And that’s a hard pill to swallow for someone in the pork business like myself,” says David Newman, senior vice president of market growth for NPB.
Newman is also a pork producer in southern Missouri, and he says since joining the NPB with a focus on growing demand, he’s learned pork demand is strong with the older generations, but not the younger generations today.
“The reality of the situation today is that the baby boomer generation has carried the bulk of this business for the last 20 or 30 years,” says Newman. “And as we’re starting to see a transition in shift to Millennials and Gen Z’s, the future consumers of pork, then we really need to focus on that and the things that the baby boomer generation appreciated about pork, their purchasing habits, how they cooked it, how they would have presented. It’s different than today’s consumer that has that buying power.”
Segmentation Study
Newman says instead of a shotgun approach and targeting all different types of consumers, the Pork Board launched a segmentation study to see not only who is pork’s customer, but what matters to each of those segments of customers.
“It’s really a transformational moment for pork, to put a focus on who is the future,” says Newman. “We can’t be all things to all people. We can take a more targeted approach and more wisely use the dollars that our producers have invested in checkoff.”
The segmentation study conducted by NPB showed 7 segments of consumers, ranging from confident meat eaters and culinary adventurers to tasty value seekers and simple feeders.
“What this does is when you go into a marketing strategy, it gives you an opportunity to go to each one of those segment populations, and you can position pork in a way that is relevant to them,” Newman explains.
Why Gen Z Doesn’t Eat Much Pork
Morgan Wonderly runs the University swine farm at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and she also teaches courses there.
“At Cal Poly, about 80% of our students come from Los Angeles County and the Bay area, so I’m getting to expose them to swine production,” says Wonderly. “I think it is so important because some of them have never even seen a pig in their whole life.”
She says her class is a lot of myth busting while also discovering why the college students aren’t big consumers of pork today.
“The younger consumer isn’t really buying as much fresh pork. If we we’ve done data on it at National Pork Board, about 46% of them see it as an indulgent choice,” Wonderly says. “I think one of the biggest concerns that they come back with is hearing it’s not a healthy product or that it’s not raised properly. So, we’re combating that at the National Pork Board level. We’re telling people there are eight lean cuts of pork, it’s an awesome product and that we are making decisions every day on the farm that are impacting the pigs and the way we raise them in a healthy way.”
Positioning Pork as an Ingredient
Wonderly says she often asks her students how many have eaten pork at the center of the plate in the past week.
“I just asked them this question last week, two out of 72 raised their hand. So, they’re using pork as an ingredient versus the traditional center of the plate. I think that’s a huge aspect, and so we’re using that as a tool,” she says.
She says knowing the younger generations don’t use it center of the plate, and instead, use pork as an ingredient, they’re catering recipes to that.
“We have airfryer recipes and we’re trying to be more relevant with the younger generation versus saying, ‘Hey, have a pork chop and a potato and some vegetables. And you’re good to go,’” says Wonderly.
Newman says the changing trend with the younger generations in how they consumer and cook pork is an important one to cater to in the years ahead.
“For the first time ever, data that was just released from the National Pork Board says there are more air fryers homes in America than there are coffee makers,” says Newman. “So these consumers, they cook a tremendous number of their meals with items that baby boomers may not even own.”
Newman says that means creating smaller cuts that can fit into an air fryer, but also include recipes that makes it easy for those generations to cook. And that does require making more relevant products, but it’s also spurring innovation.
“Every day someone calls me and asks me about pork nuggets as an example. While it may be relevant and down the road, you have to build consumer confidence and relevance and innovation will follow,” says Newman.
Working With Every Piece of the Supply Chain
By also working with packers and processors, food service companies and even retailers, Newman says the Pork Board is positioning pork products in a way that matters to consumers.
“A rising tide will lift all boats, and that you’ll actually start to see something that can be spread throughout the industry, therefore translates into not only volume and consumption, but sales,” says Newman.
A New Frontier to Grow Demand
It’s a new frontier for pork, and one pork producers are confident will grow demand.
“I am so proud of the Pork Board in the fact that we’ve doubled down around demand,” says Ruth. “We have got to be patient. We have got to be determined. And we have got to be focused on demand. It’s not something that you wave your magic wand over and it’s going to happen overnight. This is a decade to maybe a two-decade process that we all have to be behind.”
“I think it’s how we’re going to win and how we’re ultimately going to meet the consumer where they’re at and when and build an appetite for pork,” says Wonderly.
“I think we’re going to win over consumer demand,” Wulfekuhle says. “We’re going to show the younger generation how to better prepare pork and how to cook pork, how to eat pork, how it fits into their diet and the nutritional value and the value.”
“It’s a transformational moment for the pork business. Yes, we have a very unique opportunity today, on the backside of a very dark time over the last two years,” Newman adds.
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