An authentic and inspiring leader who wakes up every morning challenging himself to be better, Josh Maschhoff says there was a time he questioned his future in the swine industry.
“When I was in high school and college, I couldn’t get far enough away from this place. I had every intention of becoming an engineer with my applied engineering degree from the University of Illinois. I was set on building things – that’s what I enjoyed doing,” Maschhoff says.
He worked at the pig farm every day since he was a little kid and says he was on the payroll by the time he was in third grade. It wasn’t until he was away at college that he came to some important realizations about his future.
“All of my peers in the fraternity, my pledge classmates and friends, were asking me about what was going on in my family business. That’s when I realized I didn’t have any of the answers,” he says.
And if you know Maschhoff, he always wants to have an answer for the questions people ask. There was something about that moment in his life that refueled his passion to work alongside his family and be a part of what they were building.
“I always wanted to make my parents, aunt and uncle proud. I didn’t want to let them down,” Maschhoff says. “That motivation is still there today to succeed, but now it’s because I don’t want to let my wife Angela and our sons Kyler, Brayson, Zander, and Huxton down.”
As the director of production and flow, Maschhoff oversees 120 people on his team that serve in various capacities, from the sow farm to finishing and from supply management to logistics, as well as production-partner relationships.
“For me, it’s about trying to make everybody function as one cohesive family unit,” he explains. “When I was working with my dad when I was younger, I enjoyed that the employees always felt like family to me. All I’ve wanted to do is continue creating that for anybody else who came in.”
That’s one of the things he’s most proud of – that former employees of The Maschhoffs readily come up and talk to him at events like the Illinois Pork Expo.
“They will always feel like family, even though they work for somebody else or have pursued a different passion,” Maschhoff says. “It’s weird how pigs can pull people together like that. It’s one of the things that’s been the most rewarding to me in my career.”
That relationship doesn’t happen by chance. David Benning, pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Nashville and a fellow firefighter with Maschhoff in the Nashville Fire Protection District, says it’s because Maschhoff prioritizes people.
“He will be the first to tell you he isn’t perfect, that he is a screw up. That’s what makes him an effective leader,” Benning explains.
Dave Maschhoff agrees that his son, the sixth generation to work on their family farm, has been a valuable leader in their business and beyond.
“He will listen, evaluate and is willing to hear all sides in a situation to make an educated decision based on that,” he says.
Maschhoff, the recently elected president of the Illinois Pork Producers Association, shares his perspective in a Q&A with Farm Journal’s PORK:
Q. How would you describe yourself in a few words?
A. I’m passionate, driven, emotionally invested, can struggle to listen, am a sinner who makes mistakes, and am my own biggest critic.
Q. Why are you optimistic about future of pork industry in Illinois?
A. We have a breadbasket here. We are the No. 1 soybean-producing and No. 2 corn-producing state in the nation, and we are the fourth largest pig producer because we have those resources readily available in a state that’s relatively friendly to the pork industry. We have a lot of knowledge base and background. Good farmland allows us to continue to be sustainable. The Illinois pork industry has some challenging headwinds. We haven’t built many new farms and we haven’t expanded much, but we’ve been able to maintain assets well beyond their originally intended life because of the quality they’ve been built to. This is a testament to farmers being resourceful to get more with less. Technology, as it continues to advance, is allowing us to prioritize our time and do things that focus on the animal as opposed to worrying about things like the environment and facilities that are now more managed for us with information at our fingertips that we used to manually have to go get.
Q. What kind of leader are people getting?
A. One that is hardworking, dedicated and not without his own faults, but supportive and working on becoming an active listener to a better degree. I will also challenge and push.
Q. If you could only accomplish one thing this year, what would it be and why?
A. There’s this looming Proposition 12 question and what the future is going to look like. Obviously, we want to pursue getting a farm bill that would encompass a pre-exemption that makes it so producers don’t have to jump through so many hoops to try to meet all of the different product requirements. We just want to produce pigs in the best way we know how, in the best way we believe possible. We’ve got a new administration, and I think they’ll be very supportive of the pork industry. But we need to make sure we don’t lose any ground. We export 30% of our product in this country to other countries. We need to ensure we don’t make those relationships vulnerable to the point where we lose ground on the work that’s been done. We need that external demand to have a margin on our product that allows us to continue to be sustainable.
Q. What’s one thing people may not know about you?
A. I have a big soft spot.
Q. What challenge is forefront on your mind?
A. I want to say trade, but I don’t want it to be taken out of context. It wasn’t an issue, but I’m concerned. If it becomes unstable, it could become a very big issue. We’ve had 24 straight months of negative margins for the average producer in the industry, with some very recent months being very positive. It’s a little scary thinking about what could be retaliated against as the current administration is working to try to get us a better deal on some things. With farmers only making up 2% or less of the population, their voice isn’t heard very often.
Q. What do you like to do for fun?
A. Hunting, fishing and spending time at the lake. Someone once told me I was a good teacher. I don’t know if I am, but I enjoy teaching my kids things from skiing at the lake to helping coach youth sports.
Q. What was your educational path?
A. I obtained my bachelor’s degree in applied engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, my master’s degree from Purdue and my MBA from Indiana University.
Q. If you had a few min with producers, what would you encourage them?
A. There’s a bright future ahead for those that are continuing to look at continuous improvement. If they’re willing to look at their operation and focus on ‘How can I get better?’ and not remain stagnant in the here and now with the status quo. There’s technology, advances in genetic selection that are allowing pigs to produce more than they ever have. We’re averaging upwards of 12 pigs weaned per sow in the industry now. On the sow farm side, that’s really good. We have challenges with disease. But as task forces and other producers and organizations have come together, we’ve started to learn more about how, even inside of our industry, people can become interconnected in relationships that we didn’t know existed before. This has allowed us to plan appropriately for how to mitigate some of those disease risks. I think the industry will continue to advance.
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