For over three decades, Mark Hayden, director of sales for AP, the swine equipment division of AGCO Grain and Protein, has taken lessons learned from his father to heart.
“My father was the biggest influence on me as far as my work ethic and passion for the pork industry. He grew up on a farm in South Dakota during the Great Depression in a family of 12 children. His father died when he was a young man,” Hayden says. “He worked tirelessly to provide for our family and give us a better life than he had.”
Growing up, Hayden watched his father contribute to making agriculture better by teaching high school vocational agriculture and finishing his career leading the swine management program at the local community college. In addition, his father bought a farm in Emmetsburg, Iowa, at age 45 and began raising purebred breeding stock, too.
“My 4-H pigs paid for more than half of my college education. So, he taught me early by his example of working hard for everything he had,” Hayden says.
That’s just one of the reasons why Hayden has devoted the past 32 years to serving the swine industry and helping farmers find solutions to make their swine operations better.
“When I was in high school, it was the middle of the farm crisis and everyone said to get off the farm and get out of agriculture. I almost didn’t have a career in ag, but by the time I got out of college, things had turned around and I’ve been working in swine equipment sales ever since,” he says.
Hayden shares his views on leadership, business strategy, the pork industry and what he’s learned during his career.
Q. Tell me about your business.
A. AP manufactures feed storage, feed delivery, complete ventilation and electronic control systems for the pork industry. AGCO is a global manufacturer of agriculture equipment with the core brands of Massey Ferguson, Fendt, Valtra and Challenger.
Q. Describe a typical day on the job for you.
A. I would say there is no such thing as a typical day. Prior to COVID-19, I spent about half of my time working at our Sioux City, Iowa, distribution and technical support center – working with the various teams there, including system design, customer service, technical support, warehousing and shipping. The other half of my time was spent traveling to trade shows, meetings and visiting customers. Post-COVID-19, my role has changed, and I am now working from my home office doing a lot of virtual meetings ranging from marketing, product development, forecasting and working with the sales and leadership teams.
Q. What are the greatest opportunities in the swine industry today?
A. I think the future is incredibly bright. The U.S. industry is well-positioned to increase pork consumption domestically and to serve more markets around the world. We have the infrastructure and the resources to be the best in the world. We are well suited to continue to grow and be the most efficient, safest, cost-effective pork producer for the globe.
From an AP perspective, I believe we have just scratched the surface in regard to what technology can do and will be able to do very soon. Our industry has a huge infrastructure of buildings and pigs, but the amount of data collection remotely in the U.S. on the farms is extremely low. I think there is still a huge opportunity to take technology and spread it across our industry so we can remotely access and manage our farms so much better. We know we have out-of-feed events, water spills, bins full at the end of a turn, and with technology, we can find ways to be much more efficient. I think the next big step is the analytics and actionable management that comes from the analytics.
Q. What is your why?
A. My why at AP is to provide farmer-focused solutions to sustainably feed the world. Everything our company does centers around providing equipment to the farmer and becoming a trusted partner for industry-leading, smart farming solutions.
Q. What concerns do you have about the swine industry?
A. My number one concern is that people outside of agriculture will completely dictate how we raise animals. It’s just incredible to me that politicians and activists can pass measures that have a huge impact on our industry even though they have very little firsthand knowledge about what we do. So many resources are wasted on fighting and accommodating folks that simply want us to go away. From my perspective, all it does is make food cost more and it rarely benefits the pigs or the people that work with them. We have a growing global population that we need to feed, and of course our adversaries don’t want them to eat meat. It’s frustrating because we have a nutritious, delicious product that outside influences are trying to destroy. I don’t see this changing. I think it’s here to stay and our industry needs to figure out the best way to defend against it.
Q. What is your business philosophy?
A. Everything begins and ends with the customer. If you listen to what the customer is telling you and deliver what they need, everything else takes care of itself. One of our sayings is that “AP stands for almost perfect.” No company is ever perfect. We’ve definitely made our share of mistakes, but we own up to them. If we sold you a product that you had an issue with, we always try to go above and beyond to take care of that. That builds trust and loyalty and takes care of the customer.
Q. How does your company help and work with its customers?
A. Our goal is to deliver the highest quality products in the industry by carefully listening to our customers and exceeding their expectations. We are continually striving to deliver smart solutions that allow them to improve their operations. Our technical support center is available to all customers that have questions on any of our products they may have purchased over the past 30 years. We offer system design for their feeding and ventilation systems. Our sales and tech teams do a tremendous amount of training for dealers and end users. We are also very active in state and national pork producer organizations to stay connected and to help support the industry in any way that we can.
Q. How has the business changed since you started?
A. The industry has totally changed from when I was a kid growing up on the farm. We had no ventilation or electronics, we manually carried feed and we pitched the manure with pitchforks. Today, a modern facility is state-of-the-art ventilated and computer controlled. Feed is delivered automatically, and manure is under the floor and pumped by machinery. The size of the farms, ownership structure, methodology – you name it – it’s a night-and-day difference. The transformation that our industry has gone through during the past 50 years has been incredible.
I used to work with lots of small independent farmers and built a lot of relationships. Today, the number of decision makers has been one of the biggest changes. It used to be if there were 100 barns being built, you would have 100 people involved in making decisions. Now, if a company wants to do 100 barns, the key decisions are usually made by a very small group of people. The work force has changed, too. Oftentimes the people doing the chores don’t own the farm – that’s tough when you sell a high-tech product into a workforce that may not stay on the farm for long. In the early days, you sold the guy a barn, he owned it, he did the chores, he fixed it.
Q. If you could go back and do something differently in your career, what would it be and why?
A. I think the biggest lesson I have learned is to be more receptive to constructive criticism. When I was younger, I just saw it as criticism. Now I see it as an opportunity for growth and a way to improve your skillset. Its human nature – you can say 10 positive things and one negative to an employee in a job review, but the employee just focuses on the negative. For myself, I should have learned earlier that constructive criticism was for my benefit, not my detriment. Also, I’ve learned that change is one of the only constants and you better be prepared for that. Nothing ever stays the same. Be open-minded and don’t resist it. Expect it. Accept and embrace change.
Q. How can we do a better job of recruiting and retaining employees?
A. How do you attract good, young, bright people? It’s really challenging. A lot of my peers grew up on a farm and had experience with raising livestock. Most of us wanted a career in agriculture. However, we just don’t see a lot of that anymore. There are so many great opportunities in our industry. We need to do a better job of telling that story.
Keep reading to see Hayden’s thoughts on farms of the future.
PORK Perspectives is a recurring column that provides business and leadership strategy tips from some of the pork industry’s finest. Opinions expressed in this column are the opinions of Mark Hayden and do not represent the opinions of Farm Journal’s PORK. Watch for future columns featuring advice and insights from more of the pork industry’s leaders.
