DES MOINES

This year’s annual Iowa Pork Congress, held Jan. 24-25, brought together pork producers, related businesses, and industry experts in Des Moines for two days of educational seminars, social events, and a tradeshow. However, few producers showed up.

That’s unsurprising given 2023 was one of the worst financial years they’ve ever experienced.

High production costs resulted in pork producers taking a sizable loss on every hog last year. Coupled with disease outbreaks and other routine challenges, not every producer could sustain those losses; locally, JWV Pork succumbed to the circumstances, defaulting on millions in debt and closing their Washington site.

Area businesses exhibiting at the tradeshow noticed the empty aisles.

“Turnout doesn’t seem to be the best,” Bob Altman of United Animal Health commented on Wednesday afternoon.

“The traffic today has been fairly [light],” Casey Sieren confirmed over at the Vittetoe, Inc booth.

For John Yoder at Stutsmans, the day was off to a good start, but he conceded it was “maybe not quite as good as the last ones have been, but it’s still good.”

The owners of Precision Structures Inc. (PSI) saw the quieter tradeshow as a positive.

“It’s a little quieter, I would say this year, partly due to the way the markets are, but it almost makes it easier to connect with the people you’re definitely trying to connect with because it’s easier to track people down,” Chris Harmsen said.

Over the course of the two days, attendees of the Iowa Pork Congress had access to several seminars on a variety of issues relevant to the industry.

One seminar on Thursday focused on U.S. pork exports. Dan Halstrom, president and CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, reviewed some of the circumstances across the globe that are impacting pork exports, such as inflation, exchange rates, and disruptions to shipping routes. However, Halstrom was mainly optimistic, as he sees growing markets in Korea and Mexico as being “very exciting” opportunities for the U.S. pork industry, especially as the European Union falls back as a major competitor.

A panel on the future of traceability included Rob Brenneman of Brenneman Pork, who, alongside Dr. Anna Forseth, National Pork Producers Council, and Dr. Jeff Kaisand, state veterinarian for Iowa, discussed how pork producers can prepare for a foreign disease outbreak and provide assurance that their pork is safe. Preventing disease is key, and Brenneman discussed the access points at which care must be taken – animal feed coming in, people and trucks moving between sites –and how Brenneman Pork maintains biosecurity.

These two talks drew people in, but neither so many as attended the Economic Outlook for 2024’s Pork Industry seminar. Farmers seemed eager to divine what fate would hold for them over the next 11 months.

Market analysts Joe Kerns and Dr. Steve Meyer presented charts and graphs to support their opinions, which overall were that the cost of feed will fall over the course of the year (Kerns), but that “two bad years often come together” and 2024 will still see relatively high production costs (Meyer). The resulting financial picture for pork producers should be “better than last year,” but not by much.

Other seminars offered covered topics including laws and DNR rules regarding manure, understanding and influencing consumers, trending swine diseases, maintaining mental health, and dealing with the labor shortage.

One hopes that the opportunities offered by the Iowa Pork Congress will provide a boost to those enduring trying times, even if their only consolation is that it won’t get any worse.