It feels like nearly 100 degrees as I step out of my car.
And while the Missouri State Fair doesn’t begin until the following day, I’m standing outside the swine barn on the Missouri State Fairgrounds on Wednesday, August 12.
It’s the first day of showing for the 4H and FFA youth who have spent more than six months raising hogs, and who are now busily preparing their animals for the next few days and weeks of competition.
Hundreds of people are milling around the barn in the sweltering heat — many of them walking, hosing down or otherwise trying to cool down their show pigs.
12-year-old Aubree Sloan from Cameron, Missouri, is among them. She’s been showing pigs for six years, and is preparing one of her animals, José, for that evening’s showmanship competition.
“Showmanship is where you are judged as a showman and [on] how well you can present your animal,” Sloan said.
She said she and her younger sisters spend hours each day with their animals and are fully responsible for feeding, washing, brushing, walking and training their pigs. Over time, she added, you bond more and more with your hog.
“I have always loved showing pigs,” Sloan said. “When I'm upset or anything … I just know I can go in the barn and just be happy again.”
During the next few days, Sloan will be competing with her barrow (another name for a castrated male pig), but come Saturday, she’ll have to say goodbye — when Jose and the family's other barrows are donated to Hogs 4 Hunger.
“We just kind of decided that that was the best thing to do, and, at first, it was kind of sad, but then I know that they're going to help,” she said.
Missouri Farmers Care, a coalition of statewide agriculture groups, created Hogs 4 Hunger in 2020 to combat food insecurity in the state.
Executive Director Ashley McCarty said the program gives families the opportunity to donate their barrows to a good cause at the end of the show season.
McCarty said the program is beneficial to 4H and FFA families who may not have a plan for their animals after the competition season ends, and it allows those who raise hogs for a living to avoid taking home any diseases from the fair.
How it works is fairly simple: families decide how many pigs they want to donate. The FFA or 4H youth receive a $200 stipend as a thanks. Up to 50 hogs are then processed and butchered by a local meat processor. And finally, the pork is distributed to food banks throughout the state.
McCarty calls it a win - win - win. Families benefit. Local processors benefit. And the pork from one donated hog feeds 525 people.
“Food pantries and food banks in local communities often have empty freezers. The need is large,” McCarty said. “Pork is such an efficient protein; the production cycle is pretty short comparatively, and so there's so much opportunity there to be able to fill many of those empty freezers across the state.”
According to the latest data from Feeding America, a national nonprofit network of food banks, nearly 1 million Missourians faced food insecurity in 2024, and food prices increased by nearly 24% between 2020 and 2024 — on top of increasing costs for housing, transportation, utilities, and healthcare.
Leigh Anne Haun is the executive director of Feeding Missouri, a coalition of the six food banks in the state. She said they partner with Missouri Farmers Care to pick up and distribute the processed pork.
“Protein is one of the most valuable and most expensive foods for our food banks to acquire and distribute,” Haun said. “And, at the same time, protein, especially pork, is highly desirable. That's a familiar food.”
She said the Hogs 4 Hunger partnership is incredibly valuable — not only because it provides hundreds of pounds of local meat — but also because it creates a relationship between Missouri food producers and the charitable food system.
This is important, Haun said, because with changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and rising food costs, the demand on the charitable food system is incredibly high.
“Our farmers and producers are facing a lot of barriers right now and a lot of challenges, and the fact that they recognize the importance of this and step up and donate this to the charitable food system and their neighbors is really great,” Haun said. “And I think the whole picture of just neighbors helping neighbors is the coolest part of this program.”
It’s now Saturday, and the State Fair is well underway. While the sounds of roller coasters fill the air, the atmosphere in the swine barn is a bit more somber.
Now that the first round of competition has wrapped up, most of the kids have said their goodbyes to their hogs. Missouri Farmers Care staff and volunteers are now loading the pigs onto trailers for processing.
13-year-old Greenley Curtis and her 10-year-old sister, Anniston, stand near the empty pens that held their hogs, Tuk Tuk and Bear. The girls are from Centralia and have donated their show pigs to Hogs 4 Hunger for several years.
“It's like saying goodbye to a teammate,” Greenley said.”
“It’s really hard to say goodbye,” Anniston added, “because we've been working with them for like the past year.”
They said that knowing their hogs are going to feed families in need helps with the goodbyes.
14-year-old Emma and 10-year-old Ethan Althoff agree. They’re both fifth generation farmers from California who’ve donated hogs the last few years.
“It's really nice knowing that it goes to a bunch of families that need food, and it's going to a good cause,” Emma said.
“I agree with her,” Ethan added. “It makes it a ton easier whenever you know it's going to a good cause … It’s just nice to know that there's a hungry family that's waiting for our pig.”
Erin Metzler with Missouri Farmers Care has just loaded up the final hog. She said the 50 hogs donated this year will become about 30,000 servings of pork for Missouri families.
And since 2019, more than 2.75 million servings of pork have been provided to Missouri food banks through the Hogs 4 Hunger program.
Metzler said she’s also been raising hogs much of her life, so she understands the difficulty of goodbye, but farming is about raising animals for a greater purpose – feeding people.
And this program, she added, allows young farmers to learn about and see that impact firsthand.
“It's hard, even for me at my age, to know this project is going to not be living anymore, but we also know that it's feeding hungry Americans, and it's putting food on the table that is required to grow the next generation,” Metzler said. “So seeing those kids with tears in their eyes is a hard pill to swallow — it makes me tear up too, but they know what this whole project is about.”
Metzler added that there are other ways for local producers — who don’t attend or compete at the State Fair — to get involved with the program. All they have to do is reach out.
You can read a full version of the radio script — here.
