There is a lot of data out there about what consumers think about when it comes to the pork they eat. One area catching interest is consumer perception through social media data. Dr. Jayson Lusk, head of Ag Economics at Purdue University, said looking at conversations on meat has led to online data dashboards.
“We have about between 1500 to 2000 mentions of pork every week. On net across the country, mentions of pork are positive. There is some variation. Arkansas is consistently the most positive mentioned state, but you can also see across the country, the good news is mentions of pork are positive.â€
According to the Purdue website, dashboards make our food system more understandable by consumers and by the people working throughout the food system. One of those understandings is the ability to break it down by state.
“You can get the trends and the sentiment in just that state. It’s sentiment in Indiana is 32. So, remember that sort of scale from minus 100 to plus 100. So, mentions a pork in Indiana are positive, but fairly small in terms of volume. But overall, net positive conversations.â€
Lusk says a unique aspect of the consumer dashboard is it includes traditional news outlets.
“But you can see see over the three year period from 2020 to 2022 the net sentiment in the news media. traditional news media. was 27. So, still overall positive. And you can see the trend that’s there on the bottom that’s similar to but not exactly the same as the trends that we see on social media.â€
Producers are invited to check out the data for themselves by Googling ‘Purdue Consumer Dashboard.’