Surviving Consolidation, One Pig at a Time

Greg Gunthorp, a fourth-generation Indiana hog farmer, joins Nate for a wide-ranging conversation about survival, stubbornness, and adaptation in the American meat industry.

Greg grew up raising pigs on pasture as part of a diversified family farm, using livestock as a tool to care for the land and keep the operation afloat. But by the early 1990s, the writing was on the wall. In 1994, Greg’s father, Theodore, told him that the era of the independent hog farmer was over. Greg didn’t accept it. Determined not to be the last Gunthorp to raise pigs, he bought the sow herd from his father and struck out on his own on 65 acres just down the road.

Then the market collapsed. By 1998, Greg was selling pigs for less than what his great-grandfather had earned during the Great Depression. Walking away would have made sense, but instead, a chance conversation after a conference changed everything. Someone suggested he call a Chicago restaurant that was buying whole hogs. Greg picked up the phone, not knowing who Charlie Trotter was. “Bring me a pig,” the chef said. That delivery, into one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world, marked Greg’s entry into foodservice and a niche that would keep the farm alive.

As farm-to-table gained momentum in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Gunthorp Farm grew rapidly, at times doubling year over year. Greg talks about what that growth felt like, and why it eventually slowed as larger brands entered the space and redefined what “farm-to-table” meant. “The big guys woke up,” he says. “Most of it comes from them now.”

The pandemic brought another shock, especially as downtown Chicago restaurants shut down and office workers disappeared. Greg speaks candidly about the fragility of restaurant-driven farm businesses, thin margins, and how quickly demand can vanish.

Throughout the conversation, adaptation is the throughline. From expanding into poultry, sheep, and on-farm processing, to developing fully cooked products and partnering with other farmers, Greg shares how flexibility, and a refusal to quit, has sustained the operation. Today, Greg, his wife Lei, and son Evan farm 240 acres with a growing team, raising and processing pigs, poultry, and sheep using practices rooted in past generations and refined with modern tools.

This episode is an unvarnished look at modern meat production, the limits of food trends, and what it really takes to keep farming on your own terms when the odds aren’t in your favor.

You can find Greg at Gunthorp Farms, a family-run pasture-based livestock and USDA-inspected meat processing farm in LaGrange County, Indiana.

https://gunthorpfarms.com/