The new president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association (IPPA) has been to ports and watched pork being loaded onto vessels for customers overseas. He’s been to the Texas/Mexico border to watch how pork gets transported and distributed into Mexico for processing. He’s been to China, Japan and South Korea, where consumers there are interested in how U.S. pork is produced and who the pig farmers are. Now, Gregg Hora is set to lead the state’s pork group.

Hora, a third-generation pig farmer, got his start in Washington County, where he learned about raising livestock with his father and grandfather.

“We were a farrow-to-finish, independent family farm business back then,” Hora said.

He graduated from Iowa State University in 1982, and moved to Webster County in 1985 and started his own corn and...