October is National Pork Month and Iowa is the number one pork producing state and the top state for pork exports, according to the Iowa Pork Producers. Nearly one-third of the nation’s hogs are raised in Iowa, and Dal Grooms with Iowa Pork says it’s an important part of the Hawkeye State’s economy, “One in 12 Iowans actually has a job connected to pork production, whether that’s on the farm or processing pork, or preparing it for sale, at restaurants, somewhere in the industry, people who work at feed mills, all of those folks touch pork production and serving pork to Iowans.”

She does acknowledge that there have been some difficulties regarding trade in the last couple of years, including tariffs in China, “We’re very lucky the Pork Checkoff is used to go out and find new markets, and they’ve been able to do that. So we’ve, you know, strengthened our markets in some countries such as South Korea. We’ve really started to delve into South America, Central America and those areas looking for opportunities to sell more pork. Of course we’d always like to see China come back into the fold, we’re still selling pork there but it’s sold at a much higher price because they are putting about a 62% tariff on our products. But pork is the number one protein across the world. So there’s lots of market there, lots of people who want to have pork. And they know that U.S pork, Iowa pork is a good, safe product to have.”

In 2018, Iowa producers marketed almost 48 million hogs, that’s more than 15 times the state’s human population. The top five counties for pig production are Washington, Sioux, Lyon, Hamilton, and Plymouth.