Andy Rash isn’t one to sit still for long. He’s the first to admit he’s somewhat obsessed with continually making progress – not only in his own life, but also in helping others make progress in their lives. Whether that’s empowering a team in the ag industry or helping that team solve producer concerns, Rash is devoted to continual improvement and purposeful change.
“My obsession with progress and the culture that Alltech has around it has been a great match,” says Rash, who serves as the U.S. monogastric director at Alltech in Lexington, Ky. “It’s a culture that encourages employees to think, be creative, come up with new ideas, and frankly, steer away from over process. That matched well with my continual focus on how we make progress for the industry and for people.”
For Rash, his why is all about helping people thrive and be the best version of themselves possible. Read on to learn more about Rash’s career with Alltech, from his business philosophy to his views on the future of the U.S. pork industry.
Q. How did you find your way to Alltech?
A. I grew up in Indiana where I was active in agriculture, FFA, livestock judging and showing livestock. I went to Black Hawk College East Campus for an associate’s degree and to be on the livestock judging team. I transferred to finish my undergrad at Western Illinois University with a degree in ag science and was on the livestock judging team. I went on to teach as adjunct faculty at Black Hawk East while I worked on my master’s degree at the University of Illinois. After I completed my master’s, I continued to teach for almost four years before joining Cargill where I held multiple roles. I went to work for River Valley Cooperative for four years as well before joining Alltech.
Q. How does your company serve its customers?
A. When I came to Alltech, the ask was ‘let’s get a sharper facts-based focus on the U.S.’ I was intrigued by their culture. I think the thing that makes Alltech unique is that we never say “can’t.” Instead, we say, ‘What has to be true in order for this to happen?’ This is the same whether we are talking about a customer, a member of our team or the industry in general. Every function and every person on our team is customer centered. I know that’s easy to say. But every discussion we have as a company comes back to how it helps our customer.
Q. Describe a typical day on the job for you.
A. I don’t have a typical day, but that goes well with my personality. I don’t do well with boredom. I travel often on behalf of our customers – for face-to-face meetings, industry events and team functions. When I do have an office day, a lot of it is spent thinking about our portfolio and how we improve what we are bringing to the market on behalf of the customer.
Q. How has the swine industry changed in the past year?
A. It’s been a challenging time for producers financially. I think that has slowed down the industry’s appetite for new technology. It’s hard to invest in technical advancement when you’re not making money. At the same time, the resilience I’ve witnessed is incredible. No one’s throwing in the towel.
Q. What are the greatest challenges in the swine industry today?
A. Every year we have a new disease challenge. It’s continual and part of every conversation I’ve had with a strategic producer at the leadership level. I believe technical advancement and digital intervention can help us intervene to improve production, waste management and animal health in real time. If you could predict that an animal or a barn or group of animals were going to become sick with some disease three days in advance, what could you do in intervention to lower morbidity and mortality? Or if your nutrition program wasn’t performing at the level, what could technology do to intervene and help you make a better decision? The industry does not need more data. We don’t have a data problem. I think we take the data and do a good job of running analytics on it and saying, ‘Well, this is what happened.’ But that was last year. Now we’ve got new environment, new disease and new cost of production this year. Historical data is important, but it doesn’t necessarily have the biggest impact.
Q. What is one of the greatest opportunities in the industry?
A. Our greatest opportunity is to think bigger when things get tough. This is not just pork. This is scaled protein production, scaled agriculture in general. When hard things happen, we go back to what we’re really good at – production, animal husbandry and barn management. Let’s stop fixating on a tenth of a percent of lysine in a formula and think about a bigger opportunity that can generate more profit for the system. We’re walking over dollars to capture a penny. We need to shift that mindset to think broader and break the complacency mold.
Q. What do you enjoy most about your job?
A. I enjoy spending time with people, both in our organization and out of our organization. I look forward to the calls when I don’t have an agenda and just call an industry leader to talk. It keeps me fresh, and it keeps me grounded. I also love helping people take an idea and do something great with it. I enjoy building a strategy around big ideas to create something you can actually execute.
Q. What is your business philosophy?
A. I’ve been in the pork, poultry, beef, pet food, grain, retail and agronomy industries, but the business philosophy is foundational for me. I had very good teachers who always said build your base on facts. Don’t make stuff up. That’s the hard work – we build the facts of the industry or the market you’re going to work in. It’s telling a story that’s real. What are the facts of the market we serve, and what are the facts of the team and the opportunities we have to deliver to a market? The second part of this comes in care and creativity, or the strategy. Facts aren’t a strategy. They provide the foundation to give you a strategy to make a difference. The creativity piece is overlooked a lot of times. The bigger companies get, the more process that we implement. Process suppresses creativity. There’s got to be some process, but it can’t get to the point where you’re limiting the ability for the team to be creative. I want to get the facts built and the strategy and direction implemented so the team we get to work with can actually be creative.
Q. What will the business look like 20 years from now?
A. I believe if we implement the philosophy and strategy that is at our core, we can grow our business 20% a year. Now, when you put that on paper, that will scare the heck out of a lot of people. But I think we have the appetite to do that. Twenty years from now, I feel like we’ll have continued global expansion as a company, more talent coming on board, and our portfolio will broaden dramatically. I think it will start to move into services and ways to help the industry that are a little more nontraditional.
Q. If you could go back and do something differently in your career, what would it be and why?
A. I’ve been fortunate to have a diverse career path with industries, but also the actual role and responsibilities that I’ve had. If I could go back, I would get more experience in the different functions earlier in my career and getting outside of my comfort zone with either a task or a role that’s maybe not the direct function or the daily activities I was used to doing.
Q. Who inspires you?
A. That list is long for most of us. You can go back to childhood days, ag teachers, judging team coaches and different bosses. I’ve been very fortunate to have mentors and leaders that didn’t just teach me things, they actually cared about me. I want to make sure I honor their investment in me. On a daily basis, I’m inspired by my family and the team I get to work with. Every day when we wake up, some people think about going to work. To me, this isn’t a job. I enjoy it. There are days where you lose track of time, and I don’t realize that I’m actually working because it’s so enjoyable. I credit that to the people I get to work with. When you get a great group of people together who have an incredible culture, that’s inspirational because you know the time that you invest in them and the time they invest in you has a real purpose.
Q. What advice do you have for someone who might like to do what you do someday?
A. Spend as much time as you can learning about the different roles and career paths that you can take, but at the same time, be open to different career paths that maybe don’t marry your degree. There are certain degrees where, if you’re going to be an ag chemist, or you’re going to be a beef nutritionist, that’s pretty direct. But it doesn’t always mean that’s where you stay. From an educational perspective, if you’re convicted, stay the course, if you’re not, stay broader. Just know that when you get into business or you get into a career, there’s a lot of different angles you can take.
Q. How do you think the growing threat of foreign animal disease will impact the future of the U.S. pork industry?
A. I think the rigor of the industry to mitigate global contamination across this is very strong. But at the same time, we’re going to continue to face these challenges. We spend a lot of time thinking about natural ways to improve health, immune response and encourage debate and conversations across the industry around those topics, whether it’s genetics, nutrition or medical intervention. It’s a big opportunity, yet the cost of production piece sometimes limits our interest to invest in natural ways to improve immune response. If you look at human society, we went crazy overboard the last five years with supplements and diets, but there are real opportunities in humans and in animals to do that more naturally. It comes at a cost, but it also comes with a reward. Our job is to put the ROI to some of that opportunity.
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