Case Studies of Value Added Pork Production & Marketing

CASE STUDIES OF VALUE ADDED PORK PRODUCTION & MARKETING

Executive Summary

Swine producers have recently expressed increased interest in gaining greater value from hogs

raised by investing or aligning further up the market chain. Perceived advantages include

increased control over their product, an opportunity to gain direct access to customers, and to

capture a greater value of the final price of pork which has increased relative to farm prices.

However, few participants in the market chain have a complete understanding of the challenges

in controlling a greater part of the market chain. In order to gain insights into the issues faced

by direct pork marketing firms, a case study methodology was developed and three direct marketing

pork firms were studied. The case studies were conducted in the first half of 1999.

Three cases were chosen: Nahunta Pork Center in North Carolina, The Egg & I Pork Farm in

Connecticut and Gordito’s Meats in Utah.

Each case study participant had a unique pork production system. However, there are commonalities

which arose which provide further guidance for those seeking to develop niche or

value added markets.

Production System Flexibility

In the cases of Goridto’ s and Nahunta, there was heavy reliance on the ability to adjust production

to respond almost immediately to market conditions. Nahunta was able to control supplies

through the use of a large holding facility. They further controlled supply for various products

by having variable sized pigs available. Goridto’s makes use of a similar situation in that

they have a farm through which pigs are held to control slaughter flows. Given their small

scale, the utilization of refrigerated trucks provides some flexibility in their cooling and storage

capacity at the plant level as well. On the production side, The Egg & I farm had somewhat

less flexibility on the production, but was the only operation which froze and vacuum packed all

of their product. This was...