October is National Pork Month, a time to highlight the pork industry and its impact on Iowa and the country.

Iowa Pork Producers Association Communications Director Dal Grooms says 1 in 12 Iowans have a job connected to pork, which includes working on the farm, processing plants, preparing pork for consumption and working at feed mills. Despite the pork industry being hit with some hard times recently, Grooms points out the Pork Checkoff has helped to find new markets.

“So we’ve strengthened our markets in some countries such as South Korea. We’ve really started to delve into South America and 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 us at about a 62-percent tariff on our product. But pork is the number one protein across the world.”

Grooms stresses that continuing to have relationships with the Chinese is important, due to their population size. She adds that Iowa produces ⅓ of the country’s pork and the future looks positive for the pork industry.