Roy Lee Lindsay is the CEO of the North Carolina Pork Council, representing growers in the nation’s third largest pork producing state. He says the biggest challenge facing producers today is input costs.

“Everything from feed to labor to utilities to transportation, insurance, simply everything that goes into the cost of producing food. It has gone up significantly over the last several years. It looks like this year that the price of grain and feed costs. Price of grain makes up about 70% of the cost of raising a big so we’re, I think we’re looking feed costs have come down significantly this year, and that’s given us an opportunity to maybe get back into the black and and make just a little bit of money.”

Lindsay points out that due to those high costs, pork producers have been operating in the red.

“Roughly 130 million hogs produced here in the United States annually, and the average producer lost $30 ahead last year. So $30 ahead on 100 and 30 million pigs, and you’re talking about real money. Wherever you want to talk about it, Washington, DC, whatever that that’s a big chunk of money.”

Another concern is how North Carolina Pork Producers are aging out. Lindsey says the council is working hard to ensure a future generation of growers.

“One of the things that we’re doing is working with our universities, our community colleges. The North Carolina port Council has a program we call emerging leaders. We’re starting year two of that this fall, and we’ll be selecting that the participants in that program, which will start right after the first of the year. The idea is to show people the diversity of jobs available in the world of pork. We’ve got folks that are better designing the nutrition, the feed blends that we give to our pig. We have to have folks that can design that meal plan as well as folks that can take grains and vitamins and minerals and make those meal plans. So think on the feed side, we’ve got a whole set of folks that work in environmental quality and help us manage the impact we have on the world around us, from soil tests to managing lagoons to helping us understand the impact that our farms have and to minimize that impact. We’ve got folks that deal with animal care, we’ve got accountants, we’ve got meat quality assurance folks that work in our processing facilities. just anything that you’ve got an interest in, there’s a job somewhere in the pork industry for that.”