"Who would want to be a pig farmer?".
Despite actively advertising for a new owner for their business for the past two years, Havoc Farm Pork co-owner Linda McCallum-Jackson laments there have been no takers.
On Monday, the seven staff at Dunedin’s Havoc Farm Pork factory in Kaikorai Valley Rd were told it was closing permanently that day, ending a 20-year association with the city.
Mrs McCallum-Jackson, who has largely been the face of the business — the widowed Auckland-based human resources consultant who found love again later in life with a South Canterbury pig farmer — said this week there were various reasons behind the decision.
She and her husband are both now in their 70s and they had been doing Havoc Pork for two decades, although Mr Jackson had been pig farming all his life.
The past decade had been a little tough on her health and, while that was not the sole reason, it was a contributing factor. The fun had also gone out of it.
She described the current economic times as "rather traumatic" while the pork industry had also been massively impacted by imported pork. When she met Mr Jackson, there were 1200 pig farmers in New Zealand; now there were fewer than than 80.
Things such as levies paid per pig every year continued to increase, compliance costs were "horrendous", feed costs had increased and there was also the cost of labour. It was very hard to mechanise at the factory because Havoc was an artisan product, she said.
All farmers, not just those in the pork industry, were "the bottom of the food chain" and those who were making the money were not the farmers.
"Farmers ... farm for the love of it. To have that love, you’ve got to be able to survive. You can’t bring your kids up in poverty and have a love of what you’re doing."
The couple were also limited by what they could take off their land at Hunter, near Waimate. They were getting too old to buy more land and take out a mortgage.
For the past four years, they had "known this is coming" and, at the same time, they wanted to pass everything to someone with the same values as them and who would continue to farm the pigs Mr Jackson had spent the past 20 years breeding — and which people seemed to like to eat.
Had it been 20 years ago, she said the closure conversation would not have been had. Rather, they would be looking at the economic times and saying, "let’s ride it out".
But all those factors added to the big picture and it "becomes too much". Over the past five to six months, she realised she did not have the health or the energy to deal with it all any more.
There were still a few things that she might be able to achieve from outside the pork industry, while she laughed that she was learning to knit — something she had been trying to do for the last 10 years.
Mr Jackson, who had worked with pigs around the world, was still farming his 200-odd sows while they were in "transition" on-farm. There was nobody to farm them for him, although it was hoped a new staff member joining them soon would make a difference.
"We’re really open. If some young person wants to come along and farm our pigs, we would be in total support of them and give them every bit of help we could, she said.
"We would move heaven and earth for them to be able to afford it. We can’t find a person like that."
When it came to the state of the pork industry, Mrs McCallum-Jackson said she had spoken to ministers from both Labour and National governments "and none of them give a s ... ".
The only people making money were consultants.
She was "so proud" how Havoc had come through Covid-19 without having to reduce hours or wages at the factory and how the people of Dunedin supported the business, as they had over the past 20 years.
"That’s my sadness — my wonderful wonderful customers in Dunedin [have been] with me from the beginning. They’ve been so important to our business.
"I hate to do this to them because I know they are, if they want to eat pork, going to have to go elsewhere."
Havoc had the lease on its factory until December and, with stock still on hand, she said it was likely a closing down sale would be held.
The staff "knew it was coming" and they had been paid "everything they needed to be paid".
It was better to close now than do it at Christmas-time and ruin their Christmas.
She described her staff as "like family" and said some had been pointed "in the right direction" for other jobs.
At the moment, Havoc’ pigs were being sent to another processor and they could not be sold under the Havoc brand which was being kept in the meantime by the couple.
While pig farming had been hard work, she "would never trade a moment of it" from the time she was introduced to her future husband while in Dunedin to watch a rugby game.
Initially when leaving the country, she would mark her occupation on her departure card as HR consultant, then it was HR consultant/pig farmer, then it became pig farmer/HR consultant and finally just pig farmer.
Pioneers with what they did with pork, she said they were the first to take pork to a farmer’s market in August 2003. That was the Otago Farmers Market where Havoc had missed only two markets since.
She recalled the excitement of the first trip to the market, driving a second-hand truck dubbed Smokey Joe which "belched smoke all the way up the Kilmog".
"We thought they had sold us a pup and it was going to blow up."
But a trip to the dealer and the problem was fixed in an instant, although the name still stuck.
"I remember going up the Kilmog in that truck with so much in it if they weighed me, I’d be in trouble. A man on a push bike passed me — I was going so slow."
They resigned from the market with tears in their eyes, she said.
"It’s our market, it’s where we go.
"The people of Dunedin have been so good to us, I don’t know how to repay that, I really don’t. It’s nothing about money, it’s about how we’ve been treated."
And the market had been the lynchpin of everything else which Havoc had done, including having its bacon served to King Charles, then Prince Charles, while he was staying at Corstorphine House.
He even asked for it on the second day, although she never saw him. The chef picked up the bacon from her at the market.
"There was that much security around that I don’t think my little van would get in," she laughed.
There had been some "brilliant" chefs in Dunedin over the years and, when they moved on, they often took the Havoc name with them and that was how the restaurant trade developed.
When Havoc first started, she said they were told that the New Zealand public wanted cheap and lean pork. But when they started talking to chefs, the word used most was "pap" — it had no body to it.
Some people gave Havoc six months when they first started, saying they would be bankrupt by then. When she later asked her husband why they did start the business, he said it was because "they said we couldn’t do it".
"I thought about it and he was absolutely dead right.
"We’re both so pig-headed ... and we decided to hell with with this, we’ll show them. If we go bankrupt in six months, so be it."
There were many highlights over the years including a Country Calendar episode on Havoc Pork with filming following Mrs McCallum-Jackson from the farm to the farmers market, including her having to drive over a bridge on the way five times to get the desired footage.
High-profile foodie Peta Mathias had been an advocate for Havoc pork and had visited the farm while celebrity chef Simon Gault had been buying it "for years".
She once employed a University of Otago student to help her at the farmers market. Years later, he popped up again in Raglan where he had a food truck and he wanted to use Havoc pork.
"That sort of stuff is priceless ... To me, that has been such an endorsement of our product.
"That’s what we always wanted to do. We wanted people to know, be absolutely assured when they eat our pork, they are eating our pork."
Havoc used Oritain, a company that specialises in verifying the origin of products, so a sample of pork could be traced back to whether it came from the property.
In 2018, a Dunedin restaurant was forced to apologise to Havoc after its staff told a customer it used free-range Havoc pork when it did not. The customer was Havoc’s sales manager who knew Havoc did not supply it.
It was not until she met her husband that she realised if she went to the supermarket and bought a pork chop, she wanted to know where it came from, she said.
"We’ve been in a lucky situation — we’ve got a market for our product because we can control it."
And her husband’s passion for his pigs was evident from when she first met him.
"All I could see really was he’s breeding these gorgeous pigs.
"My family have got used to the fact he wears a checked shirt everywhere ... and they still love him, so that’s all right."
