INWOOD—Chris Van Beek knows of several good producers in Lyon County and was honored to be considered among the best for 2020.
The 37-year-old rural Inwood resident was named 2020 Master Pork Producer for Lyon County during the county pork producer organization’s annual banquet March 13.
“It’s definitely an honor to receive it, there’s no doubt about that,” Van Beek said.
He has been raising hogs commercially for more than 20 years, having started between his junior and senior years of high school.
After he graduated from Netherlands Reformed Christian School in Rock Valley, Van Beek attended Dordt College in Sioux Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree in agriculture in 2005.
He worked at Hog Slat Inc. in Sioux Center for three years before becoming a swine specialist for Hull Co-op, a position he has had for about 13 years and which involves working with hog producers and custom feeders.
“That’s been a fantastic job, a really great place to work,” Van Beek said. “It’s really helped my farming on a personal level because of the interaction that I have with the customers there.”
His work with Hull Co-op involves visiting barns, helping with closeouts, connecting farm owners with pig sources and assisting them with marketing. He also helps owners with managing their feed rations and health of their pigs.
“It’s a lot of what we do in our own wean-to-finish operation,” Van Beek said. “It just blends together very nicely.”
His hogs are likewise custom fed and are sourced from two different sow farms: one in Kingsley and one in western Nebraska. Once they are finished, Van Beek’s pigs are sent to Smithfield Foods’ pork plant in Sioux Falls, SD, and to Wholestone Farms in Fremont, NE.
Van Beek also reflected on the obstacles the coronavirus pandemic presented to the pork industry during the past year. As an essential worker, he said his day-to-day job did not change much, although he did meet with fewer customers face-to-face for a couple months.
“You still walked hog buildings. Most of the time, you’re walking those hog buildings anyway when nobody’s there,” Van Beek said.
He also helped clients find extra barns for their surplus hogs and switch the animals to a different diet to keep their weight down. Van Beek likewise modified his own pigs’ food intake through August to regulate their size.
“Overall, it ended up working out about as best as it could in that kind of situation. It was not a fun situation to begin with,” he said.
Van Beek also recalled how in April, he and the swine team at Hull Co-op brainstormed ways the company could help people in the community during the pandemic.
In the end, they decided to bring a bulk shipment of ham and pork products from Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls to then give away to people in the Sioux County community.
A Vander Kooi Freight truck hauled thousands of pounds of ham and pork products from Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, SD, to Hull in April for a food giveaway the Hull Co-op helped organize.
Van Beek called the food processing plant and arranged for a truck driver with Vander Kooi Freight in Hull to make the trip to Sioux Falls for the meat. The pickup and delivery took place before Smithfield temporarily closed the plant.
“I don’t remember exactly how many pallets, but we figured between 15,000 and 18,000 pounds of meat and the majority of it was hams,” Van Beek said. “What they had done was just gone in and cleaned out their employee store up there and just shut it down. And we were able to give that away.”
The meat was distributed in a variety of ways, such as to schools, churches and nonprofit organizations. Besides the hams, there was about 800 pounds of ground pork that frozen together in 25-30 pound pieces.
“We didn’t know what to do with them. We just called some churches up and they came and got them and gave it away,” Van Beek said.
The remaining 1,800 hams were given away at a distribution site outside Hull Food Center to whoever wanted them.
While Van Beek is looking forward to the pandemic’s end, he pointed out a positive consequence from it was that people did more cooking at home and got better at cooking pork.
“People realized that they shouldn’t be intimidated by it,” he said. “I do think that retail demand will stay strong as people try new things and they learn to enjoy these favorites or enjoy these certain cuts of pork. They’ll come back to them.”
The Link LonkMarch 29, 2021 at 05:00AM
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