A sad day in our small county, and for American pork

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Mr. Bones Mount Olive Pickles is right down the road. The History channel show will be tomorrow, it's called "Its How You Get There" and looks like it will be on at 8am then available via streaming or whatever later in the day. I know it at least hits up one of my 2 favorite "bars" and the just re-opened "legend" of a BBQ shop we have in town. Hope it drives some tourism this way, the little shops need it.

[Mr. Bones]

Interested in Who Dereabouts makes em some pickles, an where to find it, in Th History Channel, please...

[Mr. Bones]

Sin Duda, indublamente

[HawkerXP]

Sad times all around.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Yeah they sold off the out of state hog operation last year and a bunch of breeding stock locally, but I believe they intended on keeping the NC hog operation until they just couldn't even break even on costs. Which is what happened now. Definitely still have the bird and feed operations, which I'm sure the owner will try to create a few jobs with but no way he can retain everyone from the hog

[Histrix]

One year ago Maxwell sold off about half its sows to a different large pork group. So it appears they were making moves to lessen their pork operations well before the pandemic hit us here.

Maybe Maxwell Foods is just looking to stick with turkeys (they were, and maybe still are, the owners of the Butterball brand).

[Bkhuna]

Some elements of Globalization need to be examined. I'll leave it at that.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

To be fair to Smithfield, they don't import from China... but yeah, everything else I also want to rant about I didn't here

[Cheef]

2 words sum it up for me.
Smithfield.
Chinese.
2 more words to complete my thoughts but would get rightly censored.

[RonB]

Sad indeed.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

I grew up for a short while on a date, raisin and dried flowers farm; the animals were for eating not for sale, so I understand the passion and work of farming but not exactly what goes into livestock. Luckily the county has the base and a large pickle manufacturer AND as of this Sunday will be featured on the History channel... but that don't change nothing for these poor folks about to be out of work.

[Mr. Bones]

We lost our Family Farm in th 80's Recession, I can certainly relate.: That there is zackly how I ended up in Kansas Territory...
Optional Link

[Mr. Bones]

I am truly Deeply Saddened to hear of this.

Eacha them folks is in my heart, soul, an prayers...

I growed up rounda tiny town, an can relate to how summat of several orders less magnitude would effect th local economy in a devastatin fasion...

That is financial devastation to th entire community, with a nasty ripple effect...

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Supposedly Smithfield (Chinese owned) sabotaged them with pricing and then now with COVID they were refusing to process any of our local companies pigs. Luckily the feed mill is staying in business as well as the turkey and other operations, but still half a thousand jobs just evaporated. I've toured this facility and the owner is passionate about his employees, there are entire families that work at this company.

https://www.neusenews.com/index/2020...out-production

Another supposedly (I don't know first hand any of this) is that our local company tried to sell the hog operation even at a big discount to try and save the jobs but no one was interested (either because of COVID or because they are waiting on the fire sale)