By Carolyn Twesten, Weaver Street Market Meat Merchandiser
It takes a little over three months for a sow to farrow (give birth) after she has been bred, then about seven months after birth till the hogs are ready for market. Jeremiah Jones of Grassroots Farm started raising hogs for the natural meat company Niman Ranch in 2005, when the company said they needed 2000 hogs. Less than ten months later (read: before Jones’s hogs were ready for market) Niman pulled out of the North Carolina hog market, leaving the farmers they were working with there in the lurch.
With steep investments in land, grain, grain bins, and live animals, Jeremiah and many other farmers needed a market to turn to. In the end they sold their hogs on the open market at a loss, but the NC Natural Hog Growers Association was born at the same time out of the necessity for collaborative marketing and representation.
Raising Hogs on Pasture
The NC Natural Hog Growers Association is made up of 24 family farms, all of which are third-party Animal Welfare Approved and certified non-GMO. The oldest of the farmers in the organization are in their early 80s and have been farming all their lives, some on confinement hog operations. Those experiences led these farmers to seek a different way of raising hogs, on pasture, or as some old-timers say “on the ground” (as opposed to in concrete-floored buildings). Pigs are not ruminants like cattle and sheep, so the pasture is not forage so much as it is habitat. These habitats include trees and muddy wallows as well as grassy fields, where the pigs can be…well, pigs!
Several years back the NC Natural Hog Growers voted to add one more attribute to their product: non-GMO certification. This required a significant investment on their part in terms of not only non-GMO certified seed, about double the cost of conventional, but also equipment for testing the seed and the crop (because contamination is so prevalent among non-GMO crops). Additionally, Jones invested in a soybean roaster and mill to be able to make his own soybean meal, which he sells to the other farmers. The pigs are fed a ration of corn and soy according to their specific weight range, to produce the highest quality meat.
Challenges
Jones explains that some of the growers feel nervous about promoting their products, being that they are surrounded by confinement hog operations. As he puts it, you can’t say good things about pasture-based hog farming without saying bad about confinement operations, which puts a “bullseye on your back”.
Bio security and disease prevention are also big concerns. The association farmers do not treat their animals with antibiotics as their surrounding competitors do.
Finally, after the experience many of these farmers had with Niman Ranch back in 2006, there is always the concern of losing their markets. Selling at farmers markets is not a viable option for most of these farmers in rural Duplin County. The poor, rural population is not well-educated on the benefits of pasture-raised pork, and they have access to all the cheap pork money can buy. Not to mention the added expense of keeping an inventory of retail-ready cuts and trucking them back and forth to market. Having a relationship with buyers like Sam from The Pig and like Firsthand Foods is key. Their commitment to local pasture-raised meats and whole animal utilization runs deep, making it unlikely that they would cut and run like other buyers have.
Below, watch a video of Jeremish speaking to our staff during a training session.