(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Welcome to a "Shot Of AG" I'm your host, Rob Sharkey, I am a corn and soybean farmer, but what does that corn and soybeans go to?

Well, majority of it goes to animal feed.

What kind of animals?

How about hogs?

Hogs turn into bacon, that's a wonderful process.

Today's guest is gonna tell us all about it.

Today we're talking with Katie Brown from Morrisonville, Illinois.

You are the vice president and treasurer of the Illinois Pork Producer Association.

- That is correct, - Yeah.

How long have you been doing that?

- I've been on the board of Illinois Pork Producers, since 2020.

- [Rob] 2020, oh, wow.

- Yep.

- Like you haven't always been vice president, right?

- No.

- You just kinda work your way up.

- Work your way up, so I was secretary and then vice president treasurer, and then next year, I will be the president of Illinois Pork Producers.

- Oh, is it like a set in stone process or you plan on rigging the election?

- No, nope, once they loop you in, you just set course so.

- Is every vice president also the treasurer?

- Yes, yep.

- That's not cool.

- We have multiple hats, yeah.

- But the vice president is supposed to like, hang out and like go to dignitary dinners and stuff like that, not worry about the money.

- I know, like I said, multiple hats and the real hard work starts whenever you take on the president role.

- Gotcha, where do you guys meet?

- A lot of times we meet in Springfield, so our office is in Springfield and then we meet, a lot of times out at Lincoln Land Community College.

They had some nice meeting rooms out there.

- Okay, well, let's go back to little Katy.

- Okay.

- You grew up on a hog farm?

- I did, we had a sow farm.

We were farrow to finish, when I growing up, and then about the time that I went to high school, my parents decided that they wanted to get rid of the sows.

- Okay, what real quick for the audience that doesn't know, so farrow to finish, so you were, you were having the baby pigs.

- Yep.

- And you raised them, all the way through, to when they were ready to go to market, at what?

300 pounds?

- These days is about 280 to 300, is what we're marketing them at.

- Okay.

- But, yep and then we had sows growing up, so they were the mama pigs and I spent a lot of time in the fairing barn with the baby pigs and doing all of that entail.

- So what did you do?

Were you clipping teeth?

- Yep, at the time we were clipping teeth and- - They don't do that anymore?

- They don't do that anymore.

- Why?

- A lot of times we think that it can like, lead to some infection and we just stay away from the little needle teeth now.

- Well, it's funny because it was supposed to be for the pig's benefit, so they didn't chew on each other.

but not so much, huh?

- Not so much.

- That was a myth.

- I, yeah, not many people clip teeth anymore.

- Tails?

- Tails still get clipped and we still do castration as well.

- Yeah, and you did all that?

- I did it all.

- How quickly could you process a piglet?

- Pretty fast, and I was pretty good at it, my brother would always want me to power wash all the farrowing crates and I would told him, and I would always castrate everything for him if he would power wash for me, so we had a good- - Yeah, to me, that's a lady.

(Rob and Katie chuckling) That pressure washing was horrible.

- Oh, it's not my favorite job, no.

- No, that was like the absolute, especially when it's cold out.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Because I don't know, if you think about it, when you're pressure washing something that has manure on it, a lot of times that manure blows back.

- Yeah, it's a dirty job.

- It is, it is, there you go micro.

(chuckles) - Dirty job.

Okay, so you grew up, you were raising hogs on a farm, and then your family, you said, decided to get rid of the sows, so the mother pigs.

- Yep, so we got rid of the sows, but we decided that, we would like to purchase into a sow farm.

So essentially we were part owners in a sow farm that was managed by Carthage, and then we would then have those pigs come back to our finishing facilities where we'd raise 'em out and market them ourselves.

- Yeah, that's pretty common in pork production and having a, just a sow farm where the mom pigs are having a babies and, and then when they get, did you get 'em as wieners then?

- Yep, wean pigs - So?

- About three weeks of age, about 13 to 15 pounds.

- And then they would come to your farm, where you'd feed 'em out?

- Yep.

- Till they're bacon.

- Till they're bacon.

- Yeah, delicious.

- Delicious bacon.

- Delicious bacon.

Okay, you were a farm kid raising hogs, so did you wanna be a vet?

- I sure did, like every other farm kid, and I was very hard set.

I'm a little stubborn, so like I set my mind to it, that's what I was gonna be.

- [Rob] That's what it says here.

- Yeah, stubborn - Everyone meets her says she's stubborn.

- Yes.

- I didn't write that.

- Yeah, probably my husband.

(Rob and Katie chuckling) Yep, so I went on to school, I went to the University of Illinois.

- Oh God.

- Yes.

- [Rob] That didn't take long.

- No, it didn't, undergrad, and I thought that's what I wanted to be, and then thankfully I got in touch with... I was an intern for Illinois Pork Producers, and through that networking process, I talked to Dr.

Jim Pettigrew, and he is the one who said, "Hey Katie, do you wanna come and help me in my nutrition lab up at U of I?"

And I didn't have a job at the time, and it was part-time at school, so I decided that's something that I would be interested in, was working with pigs, and I caught the research bug pretty hard.

- Oh.

- So, I was doing some nutrition work and working with pigs, and that's when I decided that maybe there's some other options outside of just large animal veterinarian.

- So Dr.

Pettigrew, well known in the swine world.

- Yep.

- He's been around, a long time.

- He has, yep.

He did a lot of extension work, I came in whenever he was kind of phasing out.

There weren't very many grad students left, so I was some of the manual labor as well and, but I learned a lot along the way.

- Yeah, so you actually got into vet school though?

- I did, so I had talked to Dr.

Pettigrew, about some options in grad school, and he wasn't taking on any more grad students, so I decided, I still wanted, thought I wanted to be a vet.

I applied to vet school.

I got accepted into UVI.

- [Rob] Which is a big deal.

- It is, yeah.

- It's hard to get into vet school.

Like harder to get in vet than medical school.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- It's, was exciting, but before I found out that I got accepted, I had started looking at some of the other grad programs.

I talked to Dr.

Hans Stein and Dr.

Mike Ellis, and I realized, I think I'd rather go into grad school and only learn about pigs rather than going to vet school and having to learn about all the species, so- - But it was like the party that you maybe, really didn't want to go to, but you wanted to be invited.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

- So that had to feel good.

- It did, it felt pretty good to get accepted.

- So what'd you get your master's in?

- Its applied animal science, so- - What does that mean?

- Everything, I did everything.

My thesis was in nutrition.

So, I was looking at conjugated linolenic acid.

- Oh, those, yeah.

- So CLA, yeah.

Pretty fun stuff.

- I like the non-collagen.

- Yep.

- Dedidc acids.

(laughs) (Katie laughs) - I did in grad school, we did a very applied research, so we worked on everything from genetics to reproduction, to different nutritional additives.

So I got a little bit of everything in grad school.

- Okay, got married in 2014.

Where'd you meet this guy?

- My husband and I met on a blind date, when I was 15 and he was 16.

- Oh my gosh.

- Yeah.

- Who sets up a blind date at 15 and 16?

- Yeah.

- Was it your parents?

- No, no.

It was a mutual family friend.

And I had kind of met my husband at a couple get togethers before, so I knew that he, you know, he seemed pretty normal, and then- - We do that.

- Yeah - Guys we like try to be normal and then we just turn crazy, yeah.

- Yeah, yep But no, they thought that we would be a good match, so we went on a blind date to a high school dance and it was history after that.

- [Rob] Yeah, you can't deny love, can you?

- No, no.

- Yeah, and then you, you started farming with your husband?

- Yes, so.

- Was he a farm kid?

- He was a farm kid.

- Okay.

- His dad is a first generation farmer.

Really?

- Yep.

So there wasn't a whole lot for him to come back to, quite then.

- So he was selling seed and chemical at the time and we had gotten married and one of our neighbors was riding in the combine with him, trying to sell him some seed and he said, "Hey, I'd like to retire in about four years, and I want you to take over the farm."

- [Rob] Wow.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] A grain farm.

- A grain farm.

- Okay.

- Yep.

So we had the opportunity to start on the, to expand our grain side at that time and it was, it allowed him to not sell so much seed and chemical and focus more on the grain, just the regular grain side.

- Yeah, but you guys did move into a livestock operation?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- So that was fairly recent, my dad and uncle, were the ones that had owned the farm and they were getting towards retirement age, so- - [Rob] I didn't know farmers had those.

- Yes, it was, yep, they definitely saw that there was some things they could do besides farming.

- Yeah.

- My dad is an avid fisherman.

- [Rob] Oh.

- So he decided that sound like, a lot better idea than loading pigs at three in the morning.

- You don't have to pressure wash a fish.

- Yes, you don't.

- You can.

- You could.

- Yeah.

- It'd be interesting.

(chuckles) - So what kind of operation?

Just a finishing operation?

- Yep, so we have, in 2020, the fall of 2020, my husband and I, we purchased my family's hog operation and it's just finishing.

So we're contract growers, we get pigs in at three weeks of age, 13 to 15 pounds and then we finish them out, but we do not technically own the pigs.

- Gotcha, what do we got here?

- Oh, you said to bring something fun.

- Yeah.

- So I, - This does not look fun.

- Yes, that is an ear tagger, cattle people, pig people probably know what this is.

- Hey, you can tag anything, right?

- It can tag anything, - Can tag your nose?

- Yep.

- Anything, - Anything.

- Use your imagination, folks.

- Yes.

(Rob chuckles) But this is- - Can you do it?

- Yeah, so this is a kind of a special, so if we, you can hear it pop, - Yeah.

- All the way in, so that essentially stays in the pig's ear and what's fun about this ear tag is the fact that it has a QR code on it.

So if you see the tiny little square in there.

- Does it really?

- Yeah.

- Oh yeah.

- So I got this one from some of my research pigs, so in addition to being a hog farmer, I also am the associate director of research and development for The Maschhoffs and all of our pigs are tagged with these tags.

- Which is, a Maschhoffs is a big operation.

- Yep.

- A swine operation down... Where are they based out of?

- In Carlisle.

- Carlisle, yep.

- Yep, and we tag all of our pigs with these tags, and we can tell you either, what the genetics of those pigs are based off of, when they were tagged at birth, or we can also tell you what pen of pigs they were in the specific trial.

- That's something, - Yeah.

- So like, where does that information go?

- So it all goes to our databases and we take that information.

This will carry with the tag, the tag will carry with the pig in the ear, all the way up into market.

So we can get carcass information on these pigs based off, these ear tags.

- So could it be a situation where like, it could go further?

If I go to the grocery store, I pick up a pork chop and I- - Yeah, yep, it's- - But they're not doing that yet.

- They are not doing that yet, but the QR codes could definitely have some traceability.

- I think it'd be cool.

- Yep.

- Yeah, I think that'd be really cool, all right.

Yeah, and I've done this before with hogs too.

It looks, it's like piercing your ear.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, not that I've - Wanted to do that.

- Ever done that, and what do we have here?

- So this is a picture of four generations of my family.

- Nice.

- Yeah, so my grandma and my dad and my family and we have two small boys, Andrew's eight, and then Tyler is five.

- Oh, - It's red, yes.

- Sorry, folks, the combine is red.

- Combine is red.

- Yeah, It's a beautiful picture of your family.

- I know, - Until you look in the background.

- Yep.

- That's okay, we'll move on.

- Okay, yep .

- Yeah.

- But that's gotta make you feel good.

- It does, yes, yep.

- Yeah and, you know, expect your family, your husband, you said was he's second generation - Yep.

- So what does that make you?

- I'd be the fifth generation.

- Fifth generation.

Yeah.

- Yep.

- Okay, very good, and you gotta be proud of that.

- Yeah.

- Is there some pressure with that though?

- Not, there wasn't in my case, and there hasn't been in my husband's case either, so I think that was what's really fun about how I grew up.

I was never pressured to come back to the farm.

It was, I was always involved and I was active and always went out to the farm with my family, that, you know, that labor of love thing going on, and my dad never said, you have to come back.

And my husband, Ethan and I, we both made the decision that, you know, that's something that we do want to do, that's something that we made the decision to say yes, that's something that we wanna take over.

- Okay, you are extremely busy with all this, Why volunteer your time?

- Yeah, we are busy and we like to be busy.

We like to involve our kids with all of our busyness.

- How many kids?

- Two kids.

- Age ranges.

- Eight and five.

- Oh, what are you doing here?

- It's a balancing act.

(Rob and Katie chuckling) - [Rob] You just turn the TV on, PBS kids and- - Yeah, yep.

- Yeah, left.

- [Rob] They'll be fine, there's no commercials, like yeah.

- No, we take 'em along anywhere we go.

So, but no, it's been a great journey along the way and being able to decide that for yourself is, has been a plus.

I hope that our kids also get that chance to see what we can do, and they like to come and volunteer.

They don't really have a choice right now, but- - [Rob] Yeah.

- They come along everywhere.

- So when a meeting ends, do your kids just go to the car or do they start folding up chairs?

- They start folding up chairs.

- They're the chair folders.

I could tell yes.

- They're the chair folders, and if you try to help, they tell you no.

So that they will take care of it.

- Now, eight years old, is he to the point where he tries to grab four chairs?

- Oh, yes.

- Yeah.

- Thinks he is a little bit bigger than he is.

- I don't mean to brag, but at my church, nobody can carry more than me.

Yeah, I can do like (Katie chuckling) six in one hand, 12 altogether.

I can't move the next day, but man, it felt good, at the moment, yeah.

- Felt good, yep.

- So you got the Illinois Pork Producers, which is a state organization, correct.

- Yep.

- So that, do you guys, how often do you meet there?

- We meet on a quarterly basis.

- Okay.

- Yep, so we meet on a quarterly basis and we have an annual meeting every, it's usually January, February timeframe.

- Do you go down south at least?

- It's usually all in central Illinois and we have producers from Northern and Southern Illinois, that all come up to meet us.

- What about the national?

- At National, we have a pork forum that meets once a year as well.

- Okay, you're also involved in your farm bureau?

- Yep, involved in Montgomery County Farm Bureau.

We were in the Young Leaders Program, I've since aged out of the young leaders.

- This is what, third - 30.

- I can't say it - Ish, 30 ish.

- 30, 35. yeah, isn't it?

- Yep, yep, 35, yeah.

- Well, you don't look a day over 29.

- Oh, thank you.

(Rob and Katie chuckling) - All right, so are you on the board?

- I am not on the Farm Bureau board.

- Okay, gotcha.

- Nope.

- Yeah, who are you gonna vote for, for president this year?

- I, I don't know.

- I'm just, I'm joking.

- Not really, but it's fun.

How much does faith play an importance in your life?

- It plays a very large part of my life, so I actually, I grew up Catholic, grade school, high school and in college, I'm gonna say that I, I didn't go to a whole lot of church in college.

- What?

- I know, imagine that, but after we got married, my husband and I, we started going to a Christian Church in Taylorville, and that's where I really started, I don't know, opening up a bible and like reading and I really, I've come a long way in my faith.

and our children also go to that church and it's also tied into their school, so it's a pretty big part of our lives.

- I always think it's amazing, especially when you read the Bible, how much of it is tied to agriculture?

- Yep.

- It's like Deuteronomy is like AG one like, not even 101 AG zero, zero.

(Rob and Katie chuckling) Telling you how to like, raise food and stuff.

- Yep - Like what you can and can't eat.

So with the, I mean, when you farm, things don't always go perfect, and it seems like you have farmers that just like, they're going to throw every tool, they can get their hands on and then you get farmers that are like, all right, let's try to figure this out, and it seems like those farmers are the ones that, try to rely on faith to get through to the next day.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yep, a hundred percent.

I mean, it takes a lot of faith to continue doing what we're doing.

- Geez, yeah, it is, not sure it's right.

- I'm not sure, but we have faith that it will work out.

- So what do you think the future holds for your family?

- I would say that, I hope the future, that our children can see that, that agriculture is, is something that they can grow to love, just as much as my husband and I have, I hope that that passion is grown in them and I think that the future for them is very bright, maybe more diversified than what we currently do, but there's so many different opportunities and path forward for them in agriculture, I think the future's very bright.

- Yeah, you do wear a lot of hats, and you talked about it briefly, but you're also the associate director of research and development for The Maschhoffs.

- Yep.

- Associate director for research and Development.

Did you make up that title?

- No, no, I call that my day job, yeah.

- What do you do there?

- So we have, The Maschhoffs have four different research barns.

Two in Northern Illinois and two in southern Illinois, where we run our wind of market research and then we also have a sow farm that's equipped to do sow research as well.

So, I oversee a group, a really great team that, that runs the barns and the trials, and then I make sure that we have protocols that we can execute, labor resources, flow planning of where the pigs are going and, all the little minor details.

- Yeah, it's so fascinating to me, the way the agriculture has changed, and you know, I'll say first off, Maschhoffs, probably one of the best run farm livestock that, that, that I've come across.

They really do a good job, but that used to all be done by the extension, it never used to be done by the farms, but that's all kind of changed, hadn't it?

- It has, and that's a lot of the university studies, a lot of the extension work that was the predominant source of research that we would see and that producers would gain and then what Maschhoffs did is, we internalized a lot of it, but we also do a lot of contract research.

So where we go and we partner with outside companies and we do the research in our barns.

So, that has been definitely a shift, 'cause The Maschhoffs had partnered with Dr.

Ellis up at the U of I, for a lot of their research, and then once he retired, it just shifted internally.

So it's definitely changed along the generations, but the research that we do is definitely impacting the industry.

- Yeah, oh, 100%, I'm sure.

Yeah, I challenged my wife, Emily to find first generation farmers, when we started the XM show, the thinking that she wouldn't ever find them, but she does, she finds 'em and they aren't probably, what I think of what would be like farming right, like I always look at myself as the farmer, but as big as some of the pork production is getting, these people that are figuring out these small niches, are I mean, it's more than just a hobby or whatever.

I mean, some of 'em are making bank, I'm making good money.

- Yep.

- Do you see that as a trend, in the industry?

- I would say it's probably two fold.

I hope that there's many more first generation farmers.

I also hope that there's, you know, the second, third and fourth, right?

- Yeah.

- That continue on, but, and I think like the hog industry is also an option for a lot of those first generation farmers, which I think is great, 'cause you know, if you have a partnership where you don't have to, you know, you might not have as much risk, but you partner with an integrator, like The Maschhoffs, I think that's an opportunity, for some of those first generation farmers to really get a start.

- Well, and there's always gonna be the people that want to buy from the little guy, right?

- Yeah.

- They wanna support, the little guy.

The little guy should be smart enough to upcharge a little bit.

- Yep, that's right.

- Well, if people want to find out more about yourself, do you have social media, website, any of that stuff?

- I don't have a website.

I am active on Facebook.

- Yeah.

- Yep.

- [Rob] Just Katie Brown, - Just, yep.

- Like, can't imagine there's many of those.

- That's right.

- So just, yeah, put in Katie Brown- - Katie Brown, and you might find somebody.

- and then, it's just, you got a picture of yourself, right?

- Yes.

- So just look for this.

- Yeah, yeah.

Me and my family.

- I love talking to you because it, you know, it takes me back to when I raised hogs.

It was the majority of my life, I raised hogs and we finally got out.

Well, I finally got out in 2008.

But yeah, I love talking about it and I love to see people that are passionate about it, and you are not only passionate, but you're doing a great job getting other people to understand what the whole pork industry is like, and God love you, cause I love bacon.

So, Katie Brown, I want to thank you for coming.

I know you're busy, I wanna thank you for coming and talk with us, it really, really is a pleasure.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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