The past three years have seen a rapid rise in demand for one type of meat nationwide: pork.
In 2015, a record 9.8 billion pounds were sold to restaurants. With bacon on everything from scallops to cupcakes, demand for pork is just as high in Maine. But are Maine farmers reaping any benefit?
It’s 8 degrees below zero at the Kenney farm in Patten. The clock has just struck 6 a.m., and the chores are already underway.
Charlie Kenney and his wife Laura are one link in a burgeoning, nationwide pork industry. They’re not a big operation. They breed and raise up to 200 Yorkshire piglets at a time, and then these “feeder pigs” are shipped to other farms around New England to finish growing.
Eventually, they’ll hit freezer cases as bacon, sausage, and pork chops.
“A feeder pig in the spring, they get anywhere from $110 to $130 for a 40-pound pig,” Kenney says.
That same 40-pound pig will top out at over 200 pounds, with consumers paying up to $12 per pound for organically raised cuts. But the Kenneys, who have been involved in farming their whole lives, are the first to admit that the demands of pig farming are not for everybody.
A pig barn in winter is not only the smelliest place you’re likely ever to be, but also one of the loudest.
“We grind their own grain. It’s barley and oats and soybean and vitamins added,” Laura Kenney says. “It’s less expensive but more work. But then you know what they’re eating. We’re not buying commercial grain.”
And that grain is grown just up the road in Aroostook County. It’s this attention to the pigs’ diet and treatment that many customers are really seeking when they buy pork at a local farmers market or farm stand, says Clark Souther, who heads the Maine Pork Producers Association.
“A lot of them like to know where their meat comes from, and it’s raised differently today than it was when I was a kid,” he says.
Souther says once upon a time, pigs were treated more as garbage disposal units. Concerns over factory farming, health and animal welfare put the industry into a negative spotlight in the 90’s.
But these days, Souther says many Maine consumers are more educated and choosy. They’re seeking products they can feel good about eating — if they know where to find them.
“This year I had to turn some of these customers away, and then I was short on roaster pigs. Some of the other producers I sent them to — they were sold out,” he says.
Souther says his members are reporting that customers are ordering pork at least a year in advance, with orders over the last couple of years doubled or tripled in some instances. And they’re going straight to the farm for the product.
Still, success in Maine pork has been spotty. One of the state’s larger producers, Mike Hemond of Minot, who sells as many as 2,000 piglets each year, says he’s frustrated with the industry because a big piece of the marketing puzzle is missing: retailers.
“Right now, these grocers are just looking to find the cheapest product they can, and get the most for it,” he says.
Hemond says he has been offered contracts with local processors at 59 cents per pound, when it costs him 75 cents per pound to break even. And he says that will have to change if Maine is to truly become a pork producing state.
“If there could be something — tax credits or something that locally or even at the federal level they could get, rewarding them for buying local,” he says.
Back at the Kenney farm in Patten, Laura and Charlie agree that at this time, it would be tough for a farmer in Maine to try to compete in a pork commodities market. But they say their own son is living proof that the demand is there.
“Well he got 20 last year — piglets. And raises them and sells them at his own farm store and at a farmers market now, and he gets $4 and $5 a pound — $7 a pound for sausage and bacon,” Laura Kenney says.
And they say their neighbor put his kids through college from the proceeds from just ten pigs per year. But they’ve also seen couples last a season and quit.
It’s not known how many farmers are entering or leaving the industry — the state doesn’t track that data. Nor does there seem to be a concerted effort at this time to organize or market Maine pork.
