After some time helping his grandpa on the family farm, Josh Payne decided to leave his teaching career and help run the operation full time.
Because his grandpa had the land and equipment paid for, their 600 acres in Concordia, Missouri provided enough income for two salaries - but Payne knew his sister may want to join them as well. That’s when he adopted the motto “Get Big or Get Weird”.
“We could pick up 1,000 acres, but that means we need more equipment,” he tells Andrew McCrea on the Farming The Countryside podcast. “Instead of getting more acres, we decided that we wanted to take these small pockets of our farm and try to add value to it.”
University of Missouri staff suggested the Paynes try chestnuts.
“At a wholesale level, they’ll produce about 2,000 lb. per acre at $3/lb. wholesale. That’s $6,000 an acre, so if we put 30 acres in, that’s enough for my grandpa, me and my sister to make a go at this,” Payne says.
But there was a catch.
“The problem is we just had to wait 10 years for the first harvest,” he says.
From Chestnuts To Sheep To Hogs
The family went ahead and planted their chestnut orchard, and alley cropped corn, soybeans and cover crops as they waited for it to grow. They still needed a plan B in the meantime, though. That became sheep.
“We chose sheep because the math is really good,” Payne says. “If you can have three ewes per acre, at a very wholesale level, you end up with four lambs per acre. If you sell the lambs for $200, that’s $800 per acre, and you’re going to spend about $100 per acre. That’s significantly better profit-wise than any sort of row crops.”
The main economic driver of the farm turned from row crops to sheep quickly. The Paynes began direct marketing the lamb and selling breeding stock to drive an even higher price for their products.
The sheep now account for 300 of the farm’s acreage, and the family has another new venture up their sleeves as well.
“Our next project is to take 110-acre plot and turn it into a wholesale pasture pork operation that we’re actually really excited about,” Payne says.
Just like the sheep, Payne has a plan mapped out for the hogs.
“We’re trying to take a hoop house and grow grains in between tree rows. We’re going to plant these rows of trees that eventually will drop fruit - mulberries, persimmons, apples, chestnuts, etc.,” he explains. “Eventually those will provide significant amounts of feed for those pigs. Then we’re going to grow grains in between.”
But there’s a bigger picture behind the farm’s hog expansion.
“My brother in law works in Kansas City, and he wants to be able to not drive to Kansas City,” Payne says. “We said is there a way that we can make enough money on acres of land that we have that he doesn’t have to drive to Kansas City?”
People As The Driver
The driver on Payne’s farm is people. He says if you want to do the same with your family, you have to find something meaningful for them to do, that they know how to do and that they can make money with.
“If you were to take a 1,000-acre farmer, and you were to take 40 of that out of row crops or modify it, all of a sudden, this 1,000-acre farmer is a 960-acre farmer, and they have a 40-acre operation that their son or daughter runs,” Payne says. “At commodity prices today, that could make as much profit and probably more. You just need more people. And for me, that’s just good news.”
He adds one caveat to be ready for.
“You just have to be willing to let the coffee shop talk and tell stories about you,” he says.
