CARLYLE, Ill. — The last few months has been a harder sell for Sam Stock, business development manager at The Maschhoffs, the pork production system headquartered in Carlyle, in southern Illinois.
Stock’s territory, for finding new production partners and for maintaining the relationships with current Maschhoffs production partners, spans from Springfield south and includes northwest Missouri.
“It has slowed down significantly compared to what it normally would be this time of year,” Stock said.
More than a year ago, Stock was a guest speaker at a meeting of corn growers who supply corn to Maschhoffs feed mills in southern Illinois. One of the interested farmers who approached Stock was Josh Kuberski of Tamaroa.
“We first talked in February 2019,” Stock said.
He proceeded to talk cash flows and financial numbers involved with being a Maschhoffs production partner and took Josh and his father, Paul, on a tour of other Maschhoffs barns. After Josh decided to go ahead with building a 2,400-head barn, the permitting process began in December 2019.
“We started the building process in April. April 20 was the day the building process kicked off,” Stock said.
By that time, the U.S. pork industry was entering a crisis mode due to the coronavirus pandemic. Processing plants were starting to slow down and pigs were just starting to back up on farms.
But the Kuberski barn was moving right on schedule.
Stock said the secret to keeping everyone’s morale up and maintaining confidence lies with a team behind the scenes at The Maschhoffs main office in Carlyle.
“We have an incredible base of folks who work behind the scenes in the Carlyle office. They are in charge of transport and the flow of pigs. Those teams worked tirelessly through this whole thing to get us through this,” Stock said.
Other factors, from numbers and quality to available internal space, helped the pork production system cope with the recent challenges.
“We were in a position where we had really good space. The packers put us No. 1 on the list. We raise some of the best hogs that they cut up and we do a good job sorting and getting them there. They are very thankful for that, so they put us first on the list to be shipping pigs,” Stock said.
Despite those advantages, Stock said that the system did experience some challenges.
“While we had a little bit of a backlog, we never got too far out of sorts that we couldn’t handle it. With all of the folks behind the scenes we managed through it and we are pretty well getting caught back up now to where things are operating as they should,” Stock said.
Stock said one of the ways he reinforces that confidence in The Maschhoffs by prospective production partners is to have those prospects meet the teams who focus on logistics.
“I always try to get new folks through the office and have them talk to and meet some of these people,” Stock said.
In addition, future partners meet with production teams from The Maschhoffs.
“Those are the teams that are out in the field every day. They met with the Kuberski family multiple times to help them through any questions they had on the production side,” Stock said.
Stock said that despite the financially challenging times for the U.S. pork industry, he continues to find farmers interested in diversifying their farms by adding pork production.
“The biggest sales pitch is diversification. This creates a steady income on the farm. You are getting a monthly check, so you know how much you are getting every single month. It’s steady income. There’s diversification and the opportunity for the manure value as fertilizer on farm ground,” Stock said.
September 07, 2020 at 03:44AM
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