Meet Two Pig Farmers Finding Unique Ways to Serve Up More Pork Demand

Take a trip across Ohio, and you’ll meet two pork producers whose journeys to the farm have been on two very different paths. 

Phillip Hord, born and raised on his Ohio family’s farm, is a fifth-generation farmer. 

“I am one of the family members that has been farming in our community for over 100 years,” says Hord, whose family’s operation is located in Bucyrus, Ohio.

More than 130 miles southeast of Hord, is where you’ll find Jessica Campbell, a first-generation farmer who’s built her operation from scratch. 

“The background of our farm is that it was started, we say, 'with hogs and hope' in 2013,” she says. 

Campbell’s journey started when she bought her first 55 acres and rented it out for row crops. But her dream was to be a farmer herself. 

“The pork is a little different. It's in the woodlot. They have 11 acres to run, but also a barn to go into as well, primarily Berkshire Duroc,” she says. 

In 2013, she made the switch to go niche, and Carroll Creek Farms was born. 

“It's not that we really feel that you have to raise pigs or other animals one way or the other, it’s not that at all. But being that we're between Cincinnati and Dayton, we knew if we were going to be an operational farm for a legacy more than just our generation, we needed to have it work with the ecosystem here which is ever urbanizing,” she says. 

Finding a Unique Way to Sell Pork 

It’s not just how the animals are raised that can be unique, but also how the meat is sold. Campbell decided to go direct to consumer, while also finding a way to be part of the community in an intimate way. Campbell wanted their farm to be viewed as a partner. 

“There's a variety of different ways that people can buy from Carroll Creek,” she says. “The first is the ‘Meat Retreat.’ We have our home farm open to the public, every day, seven days a week, where we just trust people. They come down our driveway, and we have the honor system where they can check themselves out and grab whatever meets the need for the day, and then take off.”

Carroll Creek also sells products at a few farmers markets and even online. No matter where the pork products are being sold, she wanted to make sure the products they offered consumers are done so in a convenient way. 

Bringing New Flavor to the Farm

For Hord, his family’s pig farm is more traditional. A large operation in north central Ohio, Hord didn’t know if farming was even what he wanted to do. 

“One of the things that I did when I got into college was really do some searching on what I liked, and what I thought I might like to get into for my career and getting further into coursework,” says Hord. 

He dabbled in jobs off the farm, but he says it finally became clear: his calling in life was to be on his family farm. 

“And through some experiences over time, I spent some time in different parts of our business,  which really helped shape my view and my skills,” says Hord. 

When he first came back, his main focus was production. That’s until the fifth-generation pig farmer carved out his own specialty, finding ways to serve up more demand for pork. 

“In the industry where very few producers are vertically integrated, it's extremely important that we know where our products are going and what that product looks like,” he adds. 

Finding a Way to Connect to Food Service and Retailers

Hord says anything he does on the farm has to provide value. And so over time, he worked with various organizations to add a new flavor to what their farm offers, and he ultimately decided to start going straight to the source. 

“Talking directly to retailers and food service individuals that are out there making decisions about where our product goes is very important, because without them and without their work and our product getting on the shelves, we wouldn't be a viable industry. We wouldn't have a business and a farm here,” says Hord. 

Whether it’s having conversations with retailers or bringing  groups out to the farm, Hord is a true believer in pulling the curtain back on their operation. 

“Our opinion and our perspective is that why not be connected? And why not be involved in and be a resource and answer questions while giving opportunities for them to come on to the farm,” says Hord. 

Driving Demand at Home and Abroad 

While Hord and Campbell’s operations may look different, driving demand is where their paths intersect.

Campbell isn’t just a pig farmer herself, but an ag lender, and a mom of two with another on the way. And she sees ground pork as a huge opportunity for growth in ground pork. 

“I think moving into that space where it's more ready to eat quick and easy, but really using that base product and just flavoring ground pork well, is going to provide a world of opportunity for the future,” she says. 

From chorizo to other ground pork specialties, she sees ground pork as a convenient option for shoppers, and one that will help boost demand for pork. 

Campbell has a unique view of that demand, as she currently serves on the National Pork Board, traveling internationally to help develop those connections and relationships worldwide.

“The importers really wanted a personalized story about our farm,” she says. “They had questions about the U.S. industry, of course, but they really wanted to get to know us as people and understand our operations and find synergies between what they were going through and what we were going through as producers.”

She says during one of her first trips abroad, she was amazed with how much brand recognition other countries have for U.S. pork. 

“We went to multiple grocery stores in Colombia and Panama, and the U.S. pork logos were their product predominantly,” says Campbell. “I’m just very impressed how they're branding our product as premium and are continually increasing the exports.”

Creating Connections to the Farm Through Powerful Stories

Campbell focuses on demand around the globe, while Hord is looking at growing that hunger for U.S. pork here at home. And just like Campbell has seen first-hand, Hord says it's all about creating connections and helping share their farm's story. 

“The people in retail and food service we talk to are genuinely curious to find that a lot of our farms, we believe, are going to be carbon neutral, if not carbon negative. And that's a really awesome story to be able to tell,” Hord says. 

Hord is able to not only tell them about the journey of carbon neutrality on the farm, but their family can also now put numbers behind that story.

“So things through technologies, different processes and procedures we've done on the farm, and we've learned over time, we can tell that story with a lot of confidence that we are a part of the solution and not necessarily part of a problem,” he says. 

Some of those solutions are through bigger and longer-term commitments, while others are just small changes on the farm. 

“Even talking more about energy reduction or ways to reduce our footprint, we'll be implementing things such as LED lighting, or on our farms in the birthing areas, we converted from heat lamps, which we're using heat bulbs to heat mats, because they use less electricity, and also actually are providing a better environment for small pigs,” says Hord. 

The Hords aren’t doing a complete overhaul in everything they do. In some cases, the family isn’t even making any changes. Instead, they are quantifying their impact through capturing data and communicating what it means. 

“To tell how we're using that manure from the animals onto the fields, which grows their grain and that cycle of feeding that back to the animals in that same area, it's a really cool thing to talk about. And a lot of people aren't aware of how that process works,” says Hord. 

A Focus on People, Pigs and Planet

As a young producer, Hord knows the work he’s doing now, could bring even more people to the table hungry for U.S. pork. 

“People, pigs and planet, I think, are really important and major topics,” he says. 

And it’s building that confidence among consumers that could live on for generations to come, even on their own farms. 

“When we're out there doing the hard work and building this business from scratch, it's really not as much about our generation, but setting up those boys for the next generation, and ensuring that they have a viable operation to come back to,” says Campbell.

We will be uniting together June 5-11 for PORK Week across all of our Farm Journal platforms to elevate the important role the pork industry plays in feeding the world. Share your stories and post photos on social media using #PORKWeek23 to help us honor the pork industry. From “AgDay TV” to “AgriTalk” to “U.S. Farm Report” to PorkBusiness.com and everything in between, tune in and join us as we acknowledge the most noble profession there is: feeding people.