'A night-and-day difference'

Dealing locally affords better pork for buyers, better prices for hog farmers

SCHLEY -- Tom Meyer knows pork.

The owner of the Q Shack in Raleigh's North Hills Shopping Center and Tommy's Rubs and Grubs on the Duke University campus said the meat he had been buying from major processors was "merely adequate." So six months ago, he began switching to local hogs.

"The food that you all grow ... is better than I'm able to get anywhere else," Meyer told farmers Tuesday at Orange County's annual agricultural summit. "The texture, the color, the smell. If you're a meat eater, it's a night-and-day difference."

Meyer now buys hogs from farmers in six local counties, including Orange and Wake.

Customers are willing to pay more for a better product, he said. Meyer already has switched to using only local pork for the barbecue sandwiches at his restaurant at Duke, and he has raised the price. He hopes eventually to do the same at The Q Shack in Raleigh.

"It's more profitable for me to buy locally and sell locally," he said. "It's worth more to customers, and they're happy to pay an extra dollar per sandwich."

It is more profitable for farmers, too.

Farmers selling pasture-raised pork can make 40 percent to 50 percent more per pound selling to restaurants or at farmers markets than they would contracting with a major company, said Mike Lanier, an agricultural economic development agent in the Orange County office of the N.C. Cooperative Extension.

Twenty-five years ago, there were plenty of small hog farms in Orange County, Lanier said. As the hog industry consolidated, those farms gave way to large operations in the eastern part of the state, and the number of hog farmers in Orange County dwindled to just two or three, he said.

But in recent years hog farming has started to make a comeback. Though hogs still make up only a small portion of farm income in the county, about 10 farmers are raising hogs, Lanier said. Fresh pork is showing up at local farmers markets and in restaurants.

Renee Parker will deliver several hogs to a processor for Meyer in two weeks. She and her husband started pasture-raising hogs on their farm in northern Orange County in 2005, after the tobacco buyout. They now have about 50 hogs.

"We wanted to have a quality animal that was raised outside," she said. "Quality was more important than quantity."