This Little Piggy: Porchetta Could be Ray of Hope for State's Small-scale Hog Farmers

By: Jamie Creamer

Before he left for nine days in Ariccia, Italy, in late October, Frank Owsley was fairly optimistic that an exclusive new-to-the-U.S., made-in-Auburn pork product called porchetta (por-KEH-ta) had the potential to put the profit back into pork production for at least some Alabama producers. Now, the Extension animal scientist at Auburn is dead certain of it.

"I came back even more excited about porchetta than I was when I left," says Owsley, animal sciences swine specialist in the College of Agriculture (CoAg). "It won't be the solution to all the problems in the industry here, but it definitely gives us a new market option."

An almost complete lack of markets has been the problem plaguing Alabama's independent pork producers for several years now.

"If you don't have a market, there's no reason to raise pork," Owsley says. "But porchetta requires animals raised specifically for its production, and that could become profitable for producers who can meet those specs."

Porchetta is a pig—either the whole animal or just the loin and belly—that has been completely deboned by hand, seasoned with a distinct blend of herbs and spices, then rolled, tied and roasted in a high-tech stainless steel oven for several hours at high heat, until the skin is deliciously crisp and the meat is mouthwateringly tender.

Porchetta is not some new culinary creation. In fact, it originated sometime late in the b.c .'s in Ariccia, an ancient Italian city 20 miles south of Rome. Throughout the centuries, although a plethora of imitations sprang up across Italy, authentic porchetta could be found only in Ariccia. That changed in 2004, when AU meat scientist Bill Jones, under the close tutelage of Ariccia's most accomplished porchetta producers and as part of a trailblazing international business deal, mastered the art and began producing porchetta at the AU Meats Lab.

The Auburn product—which is being marketed as Porchetta Originale by Ariccia Partners LLC, a group of Ariccia investors and Auburn University's College of Agriculture—made its public debut last September, when free samples were given to AU vs . Citadel game-goers.

Since then, Porchetta Originale has made impressive strides. Ariccia Partners sold sliced porchetta atop crusty bread from kiosks in Jordan-Hare Stadium in the 2004 football season's last several home games and has successfully marketed the product to Italian eateries in Atlanta, Miami and, soon, Birmingham.

And at the AU Meats Lab, Jones and his two ace porchetta assistants, Meats Lab Sales Manager Susan Dale and AU graduate student Carla Shoemaker, can't keep enough porchetta cooked to meet demand.

This is good news for the state's pork producers, whose numbers in Alabama have been in a freefall for two decades now. To illustrate: In 1984, 9,500 of Alabama's 52,000 farms had hogs, but by 1994, barely break-even prices and urban encroachment had pushed that number down to 2,500 of 46,000 farms.

Today, with roughly the same number of farms in the state, the number of pork operations is down to an estimated 300 to 500 farms. Hog and pig inventory has declined from about 350,000 in 1985 to 165,000 today—and large, contract farms account for the lion's share of that number.

The knockout blow for many independent producers came in the late 1990s, when the Georgia packing plant where the majority of Alabama hog farmers sold their animals closed. And while west Alabama producers still have access to a Mississippi processing plant, small farms have trouble meeting that plant's minimum lot size requirements.

"Producers have either gotten out completely, or they have scaled way back and just started either taking a few at the time to a small processor somewhere or selling directly to customers," Owsley says.

So for many of the producers who remain, Porchetta Originale—if it goes over in Auburn and, eventually, the United States—will be the first bright spot in Alabama's pork industry in several years because it would mean a brand-new specialty market, with an accompanying increased demand for hogs from Alabama producers.

On the Ariccia trip, Owsley's mission was to study the genetics of pigs used for porchetta as well as the feeding programs and growing conditions under which they are raised, and then to bring that information back to AU and work at the Swine Research Unit to develop a bred-for-porchetta pig here.

He had assumed the genetics would be the big factor. What he learned, however, surprised him.

"Basically, they use lean, heavy-muscled animals that are very comparable to our Large White and Yorkshire breeds," Owsley says. "The genetics packages we need are already available here."

Owsley says his firsthand look at porchetta production was invaluable in terms of developing the product and the market for it here.

"I was able to study the carcasses, to see the amount of backfat and the muscling and the size and shape of loin that Ariccia porchetta producers demand," Owsley says.

Since returning, he has developed processing standards for packing plants, and he's also writing production standards for producers—standards he will refine through his research program at Auburn. All pigs for porchetta will be raised at the Auburn research unit once it is completed. If Porchetta Originale continues to gain in popularity, made-for-porchetta pigs could be a "go" for small-scale hog operations within two years.

The Alabama Pork Producers, which is comprised of swine farmers with operations of all sizes from across the state, has given a nod to Owsley's research and the notion of porchetta. In fact, Brian Hardin, the group's director, traveled with Owsley to Ariccia.

Publicity about porchetta in recent weeks and months has sparked a great deal of interest among producers.

"I've had several producers call and want to know everything I can tell them about it," says Owsley, who works closely with producers statewide in his role with the Cooperative Extension System. "Most of them are small-scale producers who at this point are willing to try most anything to survive."

But porchetta wasn't the only aspect of Italy's pork industry that captured Owsley's attention in Ariccia.

"Producers over there are thriving because they have come up with innovative ways to market their own pork," Owsley says. "Here, we market pork as a commodity, not as a product. We've got to get our producers in the mindset of thinking of marketing specific products and the concept of how their animals are raised."

Meanwhile, Owsley is in the midst of a comprehensive research project called AU-SPICE (Swine Production in Concert with the Environment), that could give state pork farmers other niche markets, such as grass-fed hogs.

"It isn't porchetta or nothing," Owsley says. "We're looking at several marketing opportunities for small-scale producers. But porchetta—oh, yeah, I'm excited about it. If it's handled correctly, it can be an economic boost to rural Alabama and the entire state.

"Alabama's pork industry is in an ideal position to provide pigs for porchetta and other non-traditional pork markets in our region."

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