The more I worked with Dr. Ellis and his graduate students, the more I fell in love with pig research. And Dr. Ellis’s program is very applied. So I went on to graduate school, did my master’s and Ph.D. with Mike Ellis and then joined The Maschhoffs right out of school, and did a variety of things in the 11 years that I was there. I led research and development, I was involved in supply chain management, and then had a general manager role, where I was responsible for about 60,000 sows. So that was kind of my pre-Carthage career and upbringing, but all very applied, and really got to work across multiple or really every area of the swine production business. And so the opportunity came up to come to Carthage, and it was just an opportunity to work with many producers, which is, again, what we pride ourselves on. We work with every segment of the industry in some way, shape or form. And the ability to take innovation and new technology and new approaches out to small producers and large producers alike was a very appealing concept to me. And I’ve been here for almost exactly five years, and enjoyed every day of it. That’s fascinating. Everybody’s journey is so different, but just hearing it, I think it makes us feel connected more with people in the industry. Now, back to the Carthage cost control and profitability. Beau, how does Carthage approach cost control while optimizing profitability? And can you share some specific strategies or innovations that have proven effective? It’s optimization of a pig production system. I’ve spent my whole career trying to master that. It’s difficult because it changes constantly. When we think about it, we think about optimizing profitability. Cost control is one component of that.
If you’re truly going to optimize a pig production system, you have to understand all of the components of the system. It is not just the health of your pigs. It’s not just your nutrition program. It’s not the genetics you use, it’s not the types of barns and facilities you have. It’s really how those things all interact together. We have a large research and development component within the business. That team is about 17 people today. And a lot of what they do is trying to continually further our understanding of the biology and all of those interactions of the different components of a pig production system. And so when you think about approaches and things that we do, I mean, that is a big part of it. We’re continually trying to further our understanding of biology and then economics has to be applied to that as well. It’s biology and an economic model that has to be mashed together. And I think that’s something that we do very well here at Carthage. Our name is Carthage Veterinary Service, but I like to say we’re a lot more than just a veterinary clinic. We have nutritionists on staff. We have people who focus on genetic programs. We have very good practical production people throughout the company. And, we really try to connect the dots in the context of the client that we’re working with, right? Because client A might have a particular equation that optimizes their profitability, but client B could be completely different. We have to constantly adapt to that. But when you understand the parts and the pieces, you can put it back together in the context of the client. Some of the nutrition strategies we use are good examples of that. We have clients of our nutrition program that feed corn, soy diets. They don’t have a good source of alternative ingredients, and so they largely feed corn, soy.
WE’VE FELT THAT ALONG WITH OUR CLIENTS, AND WE HAVE TO GET BETTER EVERY SINGLE DAY AND MAKE SURE THAT OUR CLIENTS CAN WEATHER THE STORM AND COME OUT THE BACK SIDE WITH OPPORTUNITIES TO GROW. On narrowing profit margins the past few years
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