Quite a bit of change has rippled throughout our organization. But we also believe in stability. When we look at Seaboard as a publicly traded company, Seaboard Corporation, we maintain a relative balance and don’t react to day-to-day market interruptions or issues. We always take a long-term view. So the number one challenge for me is talent. If I were to go back three years ago, labor was a major, major issue for us — we could not get labor in the plants, and that really hurt what we were able to produce and convert within our plants. The last three months or so, we’ve been at full labor, and I didn’t think we would ever get to that point, but now the focus is on, how do we keep and maintain the best talent for our business and the best pork knowledge within the industry? Like I said earlier, we don’t ever plan to be the biggest, but we plan to out-maneuver and out-focus with our customers and really drive results for our retail and food service partners as well as our export partners. That’s a great way to see things, Chad. Now moving on to opportunities. What opportunities in the pork industry as a whole can Seaboard capitalize on to drive growth and innovation? As I mentioned earlier, the biggest opportunity for us is growing into those categories we have not played in before, expanding our brands in the categories that we really have not been in, the ham sausage and even the chub sausage side. So that’s going to be the focus going forward. The biggest industry challenge, though, that I see is that we don’t give an incentive for farmers to grow a higher quality pig. And when I say higher quality, I’m talking marbling and intramuscular fat, giving consumers a better eating experience. I’ll tell a quick story here. So we were down at an operations conference in Atlanta that’s held every year, and I was out with our team of plant leaders, and we went to a nice steak house. The vendor took us out, and as we’re going around the table, you know what’s happened with beef prices, right? And some of those menu prices are approaching $80 for a steak. I look at our operations guys, and each one is ordering, you know, a filet, a strip or ribeye, it comes to me and I order the double bone-in pork chop, right? I’ve got to stay true to the industry. And some of the operations guys look at me and say, yeah, it’s a crapshoot. It could be really good, or it could be really inconsistent. And that’s the problem for me, in pork. The Pork Board and
WE’VE REALLY FOCUSED ON THREE PHASES, BEING BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND EARTH, BEING BETTER FOR OUR EMPLOYEES, AND BETTER FOR OUR BUSINESS.
Seaboard Foods, we can all do whatever we can in order to get consumers to try the category, but if they don’t have a great eating experience, that money and that effort and energy to get them to the category is all for naught because they won’t come back. And so when I look at beef, as prices have driven through the roof, people are willing to put out $80 for a steak because they know they’re going to get a quality eating experience. Back to my days at Cargill, I look back and Choice beef was maybe 50% of the mix. You had low single digits for Prime, and it’s completely changed. I mean, Prime is approaching 10% of the population, and Choice beef is upwards of 80%.
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