Southeast didn’t have. So we actually had an advantage, but we simply were not exploiting that advantage because we weren’t really aware of it. So the decision that we were faced with, the fact that the industry was going to change, was inevitable. Our only choice was, “Do we want to be part of it or not?” And so we decided we want to be part of it and with the help of some good lenders that backed us, some great families of contract growers that worked with us, and a lot of luck along the way, we kind of got to where we are today. So what you’re saying is in the mid-90s, you had a choice that it was, we’re going to ramp this up and really make this work, and you decided to go all-in. Was that the turning point? I would say the mid to late 90s were the turning point. Prior to that, we also, I think, viewed our pork production as a sideline. And we weren’t terribly committed to the industry. Whereas in the mid to late 90s, we ended up getting involved in long-term contracts with families that built new facilities to feed for us. And along with that commitment came a lot of responsibility. These families were taking out mortgages and counting on our contract payments to cash-flow their facilities. So there was a lot of responsibility with it that we took very seriously. And then in the late 90s we took over our first sow farm that we actually had our own employees on, prior to that was all the independent contractors, we picked purchase agreements and we probably tripled our employee base just by doing that. But we took on a 5,400-sow farm with a 12-year lease that we ended up purchasing. So I think as those decisions and those commitments made us more comfortable with ownership and commitment, we continued to commit to more. And I think that comfort level helped us. It helped us get out of our comfort zone, which maybe was kind of narrow prior to that and helped us continue to grow. What about leadership under pressure? You had the vision. How did you thrive in leadership at that time and currently? Llike any business, there’s always times of stress and not unlike any other business we go through down cycles and the pricing and the economics of it. But probably the most stressful time that I’ve been through since I’ve been in the industry was the shutdown of the plants and the Covid pandemic.
AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SCHWARTZ
You have quite a legacy at Schwartz Farms. Maybe give me a little bit of a background on you, John, and some of your foundational vision. I was raised right in this area, one of nine kids raised on a dairy farm. My brother Joe and I started crop farming in the late 1970s, early 80s. And as time went on it became apparent that we needed to get involved in more enterprises. We dabbled in pork production as a sideline up until the mid-90s, purchased pigs from many different states and provinces of Canada and put them in temporary short-term arrangement barns here and there. And in the 90s, the industry began to change drastically. And to add a little color to that, we have to realize that we had just come out of the 80s, and the 80s is what was known as the Farm Crisis in the Midwest, where there were foreclosures and a lot of pain in the industry due to leverage being used probably in a way that wasn’t too wise on high-priced farmland. Consequently, there wasn’t a lot of appetite or desire for leverage or debt in the Midwest. There had not been a lot of reinvestment or retooling in the industry. And as this was going on, in the Southeast and the Carolinas companies, producers down there were specializing in pork production, where we looked at it as more of a sideline at that time to our crop farming enterprises, which we considered to be our core businesses. Whereas in the Southeast and the Carolinas, some of these companies were specializing, they were armed with good data. They knew their costs. They partnered with contract growers to help raise their production, the type of production practices that were not common in the Midwest. And as that technology migrated to the Midwest, most of us felt threatened. It was a threat to our independence. We were fiercely independent and we didn’t like to change. But as we analyzed and looked at it, myself personally and others, we realized that in this threat, there’s an opportunity. And so actually the Midwest had an advantage over the Southeast, a tremendous advantage in corn price and access to packing plants and good farm soil to utilize the nutrients, which the
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