Scott Hays - president of the NPPC talks trade, Prop 12 and service

Paul Yeager   Hello, I'm Paul Yeager This is the MtoM Show podcast a production of Iowa PBS in the Market to Market TV show. I'm on location here at the World pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Time to talk pork. And when this show was on the books, prop 12 was still going through the courts. Since the final details have emerged of the world pork Expo, the Supreme Court has ruled on Proposition 12. What happens in California? Will it happen in the entire United States pork industry? We're going to talk about that, and also trade and the world market. Our guest today is Scott Hays. He is the National Pork Producers Council president. He is a fifth generation pork producer from Monroe City, Missouri is his family. His children are the sixth generation on the farm. But how did Scott go from the guy who went to the Expo on a rickety old pickup truck as he describes here in a few minutes to being president of the organization that is putting on this party from everybody around the world. If you look at all the display, ID cards, you'll see him from around the globe. And they are interested about the pork industry. And so are we and that is our discussion today in this podcast. Scott, what's your first world pork Expo experience? What do you remember?

Scott Hays   So I was just come back to the farm and was young and like my brother just started farming as well. And a neighbor invited us to go the world pork Expo and I had no idea what it was. So we loaded up in his pickup with another producer. So four of us in a little pop up camper and we drove it across Illinois to Indianapolis rural pork was

Paul Yeager   so here's been around so long. You remember it was when it was an indie sometimes Yeah,

Scott Hays   yeah. So that would have been sometime in the early 90s. Remember, we blew out a tire on the way on the camper. So we had that experience. And it was just miserable hot unlike today, and sleeping in this pop up camper, no, no air conditioning, but it was a great time seeing things that that just wouldn't have had the opportunity to see otherwise. That was pre internet even so.

Paul Yeager   So you were new back to the farm. Is that what you said

Scott Hays   I was I came back to the farm in 1989. So after high school, I spent a couple of years in the military, got sent to Germany and had a wonderful experience there but wanted to come back to the farm. And so I did in 1989 and partnered up with my father in law at first and then we partnered up with my dad and uncles after that. So had a great experience farm and I got to farm with my my in laws and my my dad.

Paul Yeager   So who had the who had the final say them the in laws or the?

Scott Hays   Well, my father in law was a real Cropper at heart and I brought pigs to the farm or sales, they'd been finishing some pigs. So great partnership, I focused on the pigs and he focused on the crops and we shared a checkbook. So it worked well.

Paul Yeager   In that first pork Expo experience that were you already thinking I want to get into pigs, or were you already into the hog industry.

Scott Hays   We had a small cell unit at the time, farrow to finish operation but wanted to grow that, you know, that was when the North Carolina style production was starting to come to the Midwest. So I was intrigued. And so then in 94, we were able to grow our operation to look more like

Paul Yeager   I call it the boom times of the industry. I mean, you really took off at that point. Why was it that you wanted to be a part of the industry? What had you hooked at that point?

Scott Hays   So I grew up on a pig farm my dad raised the pigs, my uncle's did crops and cattle. But even you know, back as far as the 70s, they split up the task and dad just focused on pigs and had an older brother. So he got to go to the field before I did. And so I stayed home and help Dad with the pigs. And I think that's where my love for the pig industry and raising pigs was started. And that's how we are today. My brother's a bro Cropper for the most part, he has some pigs as well, but focus more on the pig side of things. And I think you're fifth generation. I am I am fifth generation and had the privilege of knowing my grandfather and my great grandfather on the farm and I realized what a privilege that was to learn from those guys. And, ya know, three of my kids are back on the farm. So the six generations there we're very proud of that

Paul Yeager   as you shouldn't be, but it's not an easy time for them to be on how have they fit into your operation?

Scott Hays   Yeah, it's it's challenging right now with with where we're at with input cost and the price of bigs. The so it's kind of their first taste of a real downturn and you know, changes at the operation that that we don't want to make but no we have to make and but that's part of the business You know, we're, my dad used to say, you got to do it different than I did my good, my best isn't good enough anymore. You know. And so I grew up with that my grandfather was the same way, you know, you listen to the younger generation, you know. They're they have great ideas and new ideas. And that's how we we continue to grow and hopefully continue to stay on the farm.

Paul Yeager   Just like I'm sure you're the people before you had to maybe bite their knuckle Have you had to bite your knuckle a time or two? Yeah, we'll try that.

Scott Hays   The others a little bit of that. Yeah. And once in a while you, you know, you, you try to give advice and try to keep them out of the ditches. But once in a while, you gotta let them make a little mistake, too. So that they learn. So

Paul Yeager   you don't get to be national president unless you've started at the local level. So when did you start getting into local pork leadership?

Scott Hays   So I come from a family that that was involved civically. You know, my grandfather was a county commissioner, my dad was on the rec board, my uncles on The Waterboy, you know, we just did those kinds of things, school board, church boards. So I got involved, as soon as I came back to the farm at the local level, and kind of worked my way up through the ranks. And, you know, that was a real tough, you know, if you miss a meeting, you come back as well. But enjoyed that and went on and got active in the state level in the early 90s, mid 90s, and wound up being chairman of Missouri pork, and then was on some national committees, and it was encouraged by some past board members to get on the national board, which is very flattering, you know, for peers to to ask you to do that. And then the board asked me to move into leadership, which is a real honor, real privilege.

Paul Yeager   And in your national leadership with NPPC, you are at a time because it you know, works. Chair elect to chair and it's been a lot of stuff. Using the word loosely, there's a lot been going on in the industry. What do you think, has been? You has, what do you see has been the biggest thing in your time here in leadership?

Scott Hays   Well, so maybe so fresh on our mind, but since I've been on the board, we've been working on prop 12. And in the low point, my time on the board was getting that call that that we were unsuccessful. Because not not just to push back on the activists, but, you know, we've known all along, it's, that's not good for the, for the producers, it's not good for the consumers, and it's not good for the pigs. And so everything that that I'm trying to accomplish in my time, you know, protecting producers, right, you know, to have freedom to operate choice, which gives producers choice, or gives consumers choice as well. And, obviously, you know, I've spent my life trying to make life better for the pig. You know, on our farm, we say if the pig does well, we'll do well. And that that goes back several generations. So all three of those things went, you know, it went the wrong way with the decision on prop 12.

Paul Yeager   Do you when you look at the ruling from the Supreme Court? Do you take any? I don't know, relief, that what they ruled on wasn't necessarily about agriculture, but it was more maybe of a states rights issue.

Scott Hays   Yeah, and I'm certainly not a lawyer. But yeah, you know, when they, what they really said is, this is a problem, but it's not our problem. And so, you know, there's a little bit of, yeah, makes me feel a little better, that they agree that this is a problem, and it won't work. Now, we've got to figure out how, how we fix this long term. Because, you know, we can't, we can't let the activists continue to raise the price of food. Ultimately, they don't want us to do what we do, and they're gonna keep coming at us, and which is morally wrong. You know, we produce a high quality, low cost product, you know, we can produce cheaper than anybody in the world because we're blessed with what I call the best garden in the world. You know, and if you're raised on the farm, you understand what that means. You know, who had the good gardens and who didn't you know, when you were a kid, but we are Blessed with the best garden in the world, we should have the lowest cost and the highest quality food in the world. And for these folks to come out and just arbitrarily try to raise the cost on that, or try to put barriers up, you know, so that poor people don't have access to that it's just wrong.

Paul Yeager   Does it become an effort then, on a national level to prevent? What is going to happen in California to happen in other states? does that become a strategy now?

Scott Hays   Yeah, that's, that's where we're at as an industry is working on the strategy for the future. And we'll we'll we will come up with a strategy. And, and I think people are, hopefully people are going to be a little more diligent when they when they go to the ballot, and vote. Because, you know, these kinds of rules have long term implications or, you know, have unintended consequences. And we're going to start to see those, you know, July 1, which is a shame, but we just got to keep fighting

Paul Yeager   as your conversations with those in California, Nevada, those close to California, I mean, what have those been, that you've had.

Scott Hays   So we've spent some time in those states, looking at their, you know, their ballot initiative process. We've talked to the producers out there, you know, get them ready for the fight. But we don't know where they're going to where they're gonna go next. Or how they're going to come at us next, we just got to get our message out, because we have, we're on the high road, you know, we're doing what's right. And, and we're doing what, what people need us to do. And so we just got to get our message out.

Paul Yeager   One of the messages that has happened here before has always been about exports and finding new places to sell your product. China's always out there as they're a really good consumer, and really good buyer. But they're inconsistent.

Scott Hays   Yeah, it's China's a bit of a challenge, because they're in and out of the market. Fortunately, right now, they're in the market, pretty big. The thing that that I like to remind people about exports, exports is about product mix, you know, we consume all the bacon and all the ribs that are produced in this country right here, all the other most of the other products, there's extra. And so if we can sell that to somebody that enjoys it more than we do, that keeps the price of ribs and bacon lower, you know, for the American consumer, China enjoys parts of the pig that that we typically don't in this country, and that's why they're good, good buyer. You know, we appreciate when they are in the market.

Paul Yeager   Well, you process it, you know, the old joke about the hog industry is you process everything but the squeal. If you could figure out a way to process the squeal you would write we would when you see China's being an inconsistent but yet buyer of things that we don't necessarily enjoy as much. Do you see it's more important to find markets? Like China? I know there's not another China out there other than maybe India, but find a or do you want an in Do you want another export market that takes some of the stuff that we enjoy here?

Scott Hays   Well, it's it's about value, you know, of those particular products. But that's the challenge with pork exports. You know, if we lose a market, we don't only have to find somebody that wants pork, we need to find somebody that wants that particular cut. And we have some some great trading partners. Mexico enjoys our hams. They eat a little different than we do. But but they enjoy that consistency of that ham meat. Japan enjoys loins, so they're you know, they're really good wine market suit. And there's other countries, you know, we've made some headway this year with Vietnam. We've got the tariffs lowered there. We're moving more product into there. You mentioned India that's becoming a growing market for us. We're excited to be into that market, that whole Indo Pacific Rim is is an opportunity for us. So we've been active in the Indo Pacific framework that the government's working through as well, trying to get more product into that area.

Paul Yeager   The most controversial question I have is what's your favorite kind of pork?

Scott Hays   You know, I've always been a fan of a good pork steak. The only meal we got to choose growing up was on our birthday. And I always had a pork steak on my birthday. So

Paul Yeager   excellent choice. Let's go back to trade. Because there's been some inconsistencies in the government. Like you mentioned, different administrations have different views. I seem to remember the old trade rep for NPPC used to say pork was the tip of the spear You're in that fight. But six years ago, five years ago, where are you at right now politically, in a global stage to be able to have conversations to get us pork in foreign markets?

Scott Hays   You know, it's it's been a challenge. You know, the days of free trade agreements are, I hope they're not behind us. But they're certainly more challenging. We spend more time doing maintenance, what I call maintenance on our trade agreements than we do, writing new agreements. But we've been fortunate with with Katherine Thai, she's done a nice job of keeping pork front and center when she travels around the world, we're been very happy working with her. And we do have some opportunities. And we have, we have gained some market share. But I don't think I don't know that we'll write any true free trade agreements, we'd like to we'd like to do that. We'd like to get back into C TPP. We would like to work with the UK and get product and in there now that they've moved away from the European Union. But those are long term negotiations.

Paul Yeager   Do you enjoy following all of the the trade talks? Has that been something that you always kind of had a hand on in understanding? Or do you have something else you've really enjoyed as President to be in in in here, the real story before the press talks about it?

Scott Hays   You know, I, I do enjoy the trade stuff. I'm fortunate to be around when in the heyday, you know, when we were getting free trade agreements pretty regularly, and you look at what that's done for the pork industry is tremendous, you know, Dad, $61 per per head and value right now is what Dermot Hayes tells us. So you know, it's it's a huge amount of value. And but it also makes products more valuable or more affordable for Americans as well. So I do like the trade stuff. i There's a strategy behind all that. That's, that's fun. But I enjoy being in DC, working with the legislators. I had the privilege of testifying a couple of weeks ago in front of the house, ag committee on the farm bill, I enjoyed that. It's just working on behalf of producers trying to make life better for producers, knowing that that that trickles on down to or up I guess to to the rest of the industry through the rest of the supply chain to the consumer.

Paul Yeager   I've had other conversations on this podcast with the banking industry, the crop insurance folks, and what they are looking for in the next farm bill, what's the pork industry looking for in the next farm bill?

Scott Hays   So we're Animal Health is a big deal. You know, these foreign animal diseases are a real challenge. And they're there on every producers mind, especially African swine fever is it moved into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. So we just got to keep that out of this country. So in the Farm Bill, we've got some prevention stuff in there. In fact, the cbps here on the fairgrounds, they gave a presentation yesterday, the legal teams, that's our frontline defense, they work at all the ports of entry, you think about shipping containers coming in and cruise ships coming in, obviously, flights coming in, and they're there. And they're checking those bags to make sure that that we don't accidentally bring African swine fever into this country. But after, you know, prevention, we've got to we've got to work on preparedness. And we've done that. But we and we continue to do that we've we've been able to get some teams into Vietnam and down into the Dominican Republic, to help those folks but also to understand the disease, understand how it works, how it moves. And then, but we're, as an industry, we're working on traceability we're working on just how do we get our arms around it? If we do have it? How do we how do we stop it before it moves across the country? And and then stamp it out and get back to business as usual.

Paul Yeager   This Expo didn't happen once because of of disease. And that was, but do you feel that you've had victories since you've been able to kind of keep it offshore?

Scott Hays   Yeah, yeah, that was a huge decision to cancel Expo and I think at the time we said out of an abundance of caution because the risk was very, very low. But it was so new. There was so many things we didn't know about it and how it's moving. Since then, we've we've done a lot of work on every product that comes into the US that ends up in animal feed or, or could end up on the farm. And we know how long the virus can Live all those products and those products are now stored most of them at the port for that period of time before they even move inland to, you know, to get into a feed mill. We've, we found that rescue dogs are coming in, and no regulation, no quarantine. And so we've got some things in place there where at least the dog gets cleaned and the bedding gets incinerated. So didn't even know that was going on. You know, I thought we had plenty of rescue dogs in this country. But there's folks bringing them in from China and other places.

Paul Yeager   It is a complicated world in agriculture, and it is a global world. When you think of when you're Scott Hayes, Monroe County or Moreau, City, Missouri farmer, do you do get a sense of how big the world is in agriculture, knowing that your product could go anywhere?

Scott Hays   Yeah, it's it's it's really eye opening. And it's, it's, it's humbling as well, there's many times in this position, I think what is a was a farm boy from Monroe City, Missouri, you know, how did I get at this table? Or how am I setting in front of these folks, but I want to, you know, I want to represent the 66,000 Pork Producers? Well, all of them. It's, it's not about me, it's about them. And so I hope I do that.

Paul Yeager   We'll wrap up with this. Prices has been a little low for some of those independent folks that don't have contracts locked in with someone else it's been, they've looked at beef and looked at the high prices, they've had winds that come back around for, for those trying to raise and sell pork.

Scott Hays   Yeah, it's, we are in challenging times, no doubt about it. And there's a little bit more supply. But that's not the real story. This, the real story is input cost. And we've been fortunate the last couple years, we've had prices that pretty well covered those higher input costs, you know, it's hard to imagine that five to $6, corn has kind of become the norm. And we're happy for, you know, for row crop neighbors that, you know, getting good prices for beans and corn, but we can't sustain, you know, an $80, pig and $6 corn or, you know, four to $500 being male, that isn't going to work, something has to give. And it's affecting producers, across the board. There's some things going on at retail, it's a little different, you know, there's not as much beef there, beef margins aren't as good for the retailer, they're getting a much bigger piece of the pie out of pork, so that our understanding is you know, they want to make a certain margin on that meat case. And right now, pork is providing that and covering part of beefs margin that's not there. So, but free market works. And it'll it'll work through this as well, doesn't mean we're not doing anything, we're pushing demand, you know, just got done with a meeting with McDonald's, they use a tremendous amount of our product. Talk to them about, you know, the value of ground pork, and, you know, ask them to use more of it. So, you know, there's there's opportunity for folks and certainly working on demand trying to push more products in the system.

Paul Yeager   You still sound pretty optimistic. Well,

Scott Hays   yeah, in this business, the, you have to be an optimist. Maybe sometimes we're maybe we're a little too optimistic. But you just got to gotta get up every morning and go do the job. The lifecycle the pig is long enough that it's hard to make changes, you know, every time the market moves, you just gotta get up and do your best every day and, and hope it works out.

Paul Yeager   Final question, what's the best perk about being President? Oh, boy,

Scott Hays   best perk about being President. You know, it's just, you know, getting to work on behalf of producers. I do enjoy some of the travel and some of the meetings and just learning. I'm a little bit of a history buff. I didn't want to travel when I joined the military. And when you get those orders you do you just go. But after getting to live in Germany for a while, I kind of got bit by the travel bug too. So I enjoy traveling. Some don't get to do a lot of it. But it is fun to get out and see new things and learn

Paul Yeager   learn new things. Scott Hayes, thank you so very much for the time. I appreciate it.

Scott Hays   Well, thank you.

Paul Yeager   Thanks to Scott Hays for his time and discussion on this installment of the podcast. If you have any feedback for me, you can send me an email at Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org. new episodes of this podcast come out each and every Tuesday we'll see you next time

Transcribed by https://otter.ai