Wellman farmer rounds out year as Iowa Pork president

WELLMAN — When the Iowa Pork Producers Association first asked Matt Gent to be its board president, he said no.

The Wellman hog grower, running a farm owned by his family for three generations, was uninterested in the spotlight or the time commitment away from his operation. And while he had already served on the pork board for several years, he didn’t feel his knowledge of the group was thorough enough to lead it himself.

But after thinking about it for a while, Gent figured it would be helpful to have a relatively young farmer in the leadership position, rather than a retired producer who understood the industry but wasn’t as engaged with its day-to-day issues. If properly prepared, employees and family members could pick up the slack when Gent had to leave town for conferences or trade shows or other pork board obligations.

In 2023, when called again, he agreed to take the office.

“I had conversations with my family and my wife, and we all kind of decided that taking this role was something that could hopefully better the organization, help better ourselves,” he said. “People like my wife, my brother … have helped pick up the slack of their operation. And not just them, every employee in the operation, because when I’m not here, what I do on a day-to-day basis has to get done.”

Iowa Pork’s top officer serves for one year as president-elect, then a year as president, then remains on the board another year with the title of past president.

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Gent’s term so far has overlapped with two remarkably tough years for pork producers. In 2023, growers faced immense challenges with high input costs with grain prices at historic highs, putting swine at an average sale price of $40 less than it took to raise them. And while those costs fell in 2024, many producers have struggled to turn their operations around in a market plagued by overproduction, and low market values for the protein.

“In pork production, we are always used to riding the roller coaster, you take the good with the bad, and usually the average is OK,” he said. “Today it’s in a little brighter spot, there is some opportunity … but at the same time, we’ve got a big hole to dig out of. There’s been a lot of money lost in the industry in the last two years, and it’s going to take time to recoup that back to where we started.”

Gent said the industry needed to adapt to the modern market.

Younger consumers want meals they can prepare faster and easier. Walking up to the grocery store meat counter for an entire pork loin is, for many consumers, the kind of thing they only do ahead of major holidays, if at all. Some products, like pork burgers and breaded tenderloins, are commonplace in Iowa, but rarely in demand for other parts of the nation.

Gent calls the solution “pork innovation,” saying the industry needs to better educate consumers about the wide variety of swine-based options, and provide those options wherever possible.

“Everyone loves a pork tenderloin in the state of Iowa,” Gent said. “But go anywhere else and try to find a pork tenderloin. You won’t. Why is that? I don’t know, but that is what our industry has to work on. The pork tenderloins should not just be an Iowa thing, it should at least be a Midwest thing, if not also a coast thing.”

In the meantime, as producers weather the storm, Gent said Iowa Pork’s job was to keep advocating for the industry, celebrating the wins and candidly assessing the losses.

He said that kind of cheerleading was perhaps the board president’s biggest job, at the moment.

“Even though we might not all be thriving and surviving, I want to help any producer that I can get through this,” he said. “By no means, in my position, have I sugarcoated anything. I try to help producers see positivity, and the direction that the industry is trying to go, to make it better for all of us.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com