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National Pork Board announces inaugural Pig Farmers of Tomorrow

The National Pork Board (NPB) has selected its inaugural Pig Farmers of Tomorrow, and two of the three winners have connections to Minnesota.

Madison Schafer is a seventh-generation farmer from Goodhue County studying agricultural communications and leadership at South Dakota State University.

She tells Brownfield this is an opportunity to visit with a broad range of consumers.

“So I’m able to do this face-to-face with several events and activities that we’ll be doing throughout the year.  But also doing a lot on social media with the #realpigfarming hashtag, and will all the National Pork Board’s social media accounts and things like that.  We’ll be doing some blogging, Facebook Live events, and many other things.”

Since it’s the first year of the program, Schafer says she and the other winners can make it their own.

Kyle Coble is senior manager of production strategies for New Fashion Pork in Jackson, Minnesota.

He says the first class of NPB’s Pig Farmers of Tomorrow break certain stereotypes.

“It doesn’t have to be that iconic red barn with a few pigs.  Today in agriculture, we have taken leaps and bounds to improve production and well-being of the pigs and workers.  And one of those areas is technology.”

The third Pig Farmer of Tomorrow is Logan Thornton, whose family operates a farrow-to-finish operation in southwestern Idaho.

An industry panel of judges selected the winners, who were announced during the National Pork Industry Forum in Atlanta last week.

 

Madison Schafer audio:

 

Coble audio courtesy of National Pork Board