To understand how Mississippi’s poultry industry has advanced to become the state’s top agricultural money maker, think of the hub system the airlines use, says Mark Leggett, Mississippi Poultry Association president.
Developed during the 1960s and ’70s, the hub system, or what the industry calls vertical integration, ended segmentation of the industry and ensured a way to meet consumer demand that long ago outpaced that of beef and pork nationally and is projected to surpass pork worldwide in the next five years.
There “could be no marketing until vertical integration took place,” Sanderson Farms CEO Joe Sanderson Jr. explained in a 2012 video produced for the 75th anniversary of the Mississippi association.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Mississippi Business Journal