Pork Producers promote, foster area industry
Highlighted for National Pork Month
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MARTIN COUNTY - With 15 board members and about 300 regular members, Martin County Pork Producers supports and strengthens one of Minnesota's largest pork-producing areas.
The organization is open to anyone who raises, owns, or is associated with pigs. It's also open to businesses that seek to promote pork. Their main pillar, according to Treasurer Martina Lloyd, is to promote pork in any way they can.
"A main one that we do is our seasoning, Martin County Magic," she said. "That’s kind of our main on how we promote pork. Another one we do is we grill throughout the year with our seasoning and then use that as a pillar to reach out to other people and get them to try pork and taste it."
Through Martin County Magic, Lloyd said the money goes right back to pork producers.
"From our seasoning, we use those funds to give money to Minnesota Pork for pork checkoff dollars and stuff like that that our farmers can use for specific purchases or grants through Minnesota Pork," she said. "Also continuing to help Minnesota Pork with policy and anything that involves our farmers."
Funds are also raised through grilling, which they do 75 to 150 times a year at events like the Minnesota Youth Livestock Expo and the Martin County Fair.
To promote youth involvement, they also offer scholarships open to any youth with any involvement in the pork industry. Last year, the ambassador scholarship winner got $1,750, first runner-up got $1,250 and second runner-up got $1,000. These scholarships also offer the opportunity to earn more scholarship money through event participation.
"We do parades, the Truman, Fairmont, Sherburn parades," Lloyd said. "Trimont, if they have one. They help grill at the fair or at the MYLE. We also have them participate in the YLAC conference, which is Young Leaders in Agriculture. They go through and do different breakout sessions on the industry, how to continue to promote not only pork but beef and farming in general, and that’s a really cool thing."
In the last two years, Lloyd said they have been looking to branch out of Martin County a little bit to promote Martin County Pork further outside of the county.
"There’s a lot of different visitors that hit Okoboji with the lakes and people from all over the place," she said. "We’ve gotten quite a bit of our seasonings in some of those different grocery stores and meat markets and stuff like that, and it’s been a really big hit. We also talked about doing maybe Sioux Falls or going to the east side, too. Some of those bigger towns that hit more people."
Board members also attended this year’s World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa. While they had done so before, this year they expanded and were able to promote Martin County Pork on a world stage by grilling for one of the featured businesses.
"Promoting pork is huge at that event alone, too, because you have people from China and other countries, and it’s World Pork Expo, so everybody around the world is there that week," Lloyd said.
Overall, Lloyd said it has been a really good year so far for the Martin County Pork Producers organization.
"We are trying to grow our board members," she said. "It does help to have more people to spread that out a little bit to keep doing multiple things and continue to be at every event that we possibly can or support in any possible way that we can with the Ag industry."
They’re currently at 15, but would like to reach 20 to 30 members to hit their goals.
As for pig farmers themselves, they saw their fair share of issues.
"Obviously prices fluctuate with corn and pigs in general," Lloyd said. "Sickness is just a huge thing every year, PRRS (Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome). Every barn probably got sick this year. It’s sad to see, but I think for number-wise, we were at a pretty decent number."
Moving forward, Lloyd said she wants to see the pork industry grow as much as it possibly can.
"The amount of people that we can touch or get into the industry is going to be huge," she said. "I really would like to see us as a board dive into the youth part of it and get our scholarships or our ambassadors really more involved in the pork industry, almost like an internship, and allow them to hit some different sectors of the pork industry."