second day, and I would have stayed away from agriculture, knowing the general risks that can happen across the farm. But my mom has a master’s degree in swine genetics, and she taught operations management for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And now, after many years, I end up doing many of those same things today. It comes full circle, Nebraska to Kansas City. You became CEO in 2022, now can you walk us through the journey a bit, Matt, to the milestone and provide an overview of where Triumph stands today under your leadership? I think it all starts like a lot of things at a pretty small beginning, and I really, I might kind of digress a little bit, but I think one of the visionaries amongst many — Bob Christensen and Dr. Brad Freking, Myrl Mortenson and others, kind of helped lead this. But, you know, Bob started out with two bred gilts and grew that to Christensen Farms. And I think he and some other Midwest processors said, we’re producing tremendous value here on the farm, but we’re not seeing that value in terms of our prices. There’s tremendous risk. I mean, when this was conceived it was not but a few years after 1998 which, up until recently, had been the worst time for hog production that we’d experienced in the U.S. They knew that they needed some opportunity to help manage risk, and they came up with this idea for Triumph Foods. So I joined in October of 2006 and Triumph first started processing in January of 2006, so 10 months in. What you should know about joining a startup 10 months in is that’s when you’re really losing me. So my first responsibility, a little bit still attached to that accounting background, was to try to help figure out how we could become more profitable, how we could make this thing sustainable. I remember my friends would tell me, “Hey, you’re working at a pork processing plant, and you’re probably never going to eat pork again.” I said, no, I eat pork more than I ever ate. I now know what it is. I understand how nutritious it is, the value, the quality that we make at Triumph Foods is exciting. And you know, you’ve been in this industry, we’re surrounded by people who have a passion for feeding the world, passion for what they do, and I take tremendous pride in it.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MATT ENGLAND
Thanks for all the great work you’re doing, Matt, maybe to start if you can introduce yourself, share a bit about your background, including your journey in the pork industry. So I’m from Nebraska, originally. I grew up in North Platte, Nebraska, well, when I say grew up, I was very little. My parents had a farm, cattle ranch, and unlike the farmers that own Triumph Foods, they were a little less successful, so they lost the farm when I was maybe about four or five, and we moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. I grew up in Lincoln with my mom, my sister, and went to the University of Nebraska, graduated with an accounting degree, and the last thing in my mind was that I would end up in agriculture. And I think that’s probably true for most people. I graduated. I moved down to Kansas City, joined an accounting firm, and was doing taxes and audits, consulting and met my wife, bought our house, got a family started. And I was busy doing some work here in St. Joe, and I got a call, and I had an opportunity to come over here to Triumph Foods, meet the management team and learn a little bit about this brand new startup. And it’s funny knowing now, or if I knew then what I knew now, I would have known it was a much bigger but more challenging opportunity, because startups are tremendously difficult. But I was really eager to dive in. And this idea that these Midwest farmers were kind of throwing everything in, and they were going to build this plant and make go of it was pretty exciting. If you ever get a chance to see Triumph Foods — and it’s a first-class facility, state-of-the-art — and an opportunity to be part of it and get it launched, it’s pretty exciting. I talked to my wife and said, “Hey, should we do this? Because it kind of seems like it’s working out.” She said, “You’ve got good instincts. Go ahead.” So I started in 2006 and 18 years later, I’m CEO of Triumph Foods. I will say, just as kind of an aside, there may have been a little bit of predestination here, even though I didn’t see a pig until my
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