A collaboration between various ag sectors to diversify is paying off. More than three years ago, leaders in the pork, corn, and soybean industries signed a memorandum of understanding to share information and fund research on sustainability.
National Pork Board CEO Bill Even gives an update on what’s happened since: “We’ve just completed this life cycle harmonization research with corn and soy and pork out of the University of Arkansas. We’ve worked on joint organizational goals related to sustainability...We’ve got work underway to build a draft feed supply blueprint so that we really understand how that comes from the crop acre up through the pugs and then on to the consumers, and then we’ve got kind of a corn, pork, soy sustainability initiative that we’re working on as well.”
Even notes many pork producers also raise grain crops. The U.S. hog herd consumes about 250 million bushels of soybeans and about a billion bushels of corn a year.
