Grocery shoppers are likely aware of the high and rising cost of beef. But another butcher counter staple has actually seen prices fall this year. The price of pork in the producer price index has declined in 2026. On the consumer side, pork prices have been relatively stable, and bacon has even been getting a little cheaperGlynn Tonsor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, grew up on a hog farm.“I worked on the farm before school and worked on the farm after school. And we got up at five a.m. to load hogs on a truck one day a week,” he said.Tonsor’s farming days are behind him. But at K-State, he tracks the pork industry, which he says is benefitting (somewhat) from the protein craze. “It's very much a pro-meat environment they're operating in, and yet their category has trailed beef a little bit,” he said.Demand for beef is surging in a way that pork isn’t. Tonsor has a theory that it’s generational. Boomers and X-ers grew up on big dinner plates with meat at the center, like a pork chop. But not so much millennials and Gen Z.“The average 20-year-old approaches meat protein as an ingredient,” Tonsor said.Like ground beef taco bowls, or grilled steak salads. And the pork industry is asking, why not them? There’s even a national ad campaign: “Taste what pork can do.” “Lots of effort targeting folks that aren't what you might call ‘pork loyalists,’” Tonsor said.Mississippi State University agricultural economics professor Josh Maples is one of those loyalists. “I love a pork tenderloin,” he said.Maples said grocery pork prices are relatively steady. Because unlike cattle in the shrinking national herd, hogs are doing alright. “We hit a record high of 11.9 pigs per litter earlier this year,” he said.Supply is strong and pork demand is so-so. That doesn’t really spell huge profits for hog farmers, said Ken Foster, an agricultural economist at Purdue University. “It's not necessarily that they're losing money, but they're not making as much money as they could if pork prices were higher,” he said.Plus, hog farmers are just like the rest of us. They’ve also taken a hit from high fuel and living costs.