For Chris Hoffman, it's been 30 years of farming.
“When I started this journey I had nothing, just $300 in my pocket and a small car loan,” he says.
Last year, his pig farming business, Lazy Hog Farm, brought in more than $2 million in revenue and put his assets at $6 million — not bad for a first-generation farmer.
“Life as a first-generation farmer hasn't been easy, but if you work hard to make the right decisions, it can be rewarding,” he says.
It's an incredible story for a man who never dreamed of becoming a farmer. His grandfather owned 120 acres and worked at a mill in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. His mother grew up on a farm, and Chris would come over in the summers. “But it wasn't like a working farm,” he says. “I'd help out with haymaking every now and then in the summer, but it wasn't like we actually had a farm.”
In fact, his dream was to go into law enforcement.
“My ultimate goal was to become a U.S. Marshal. To help people. I was also a big Western fan,” Chris said, adding that his father had a large collection of Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers books. “Law enforcement has always kept me grounded and grounded.”
Chris got married right after graduating from high school, and because he needed to be 20 and a half to enter the state police academy, he got his first full-time job at a local lumber yard.
He later worked for Weiss Markets in Maryland, expanding the business outside of Pennsylvania. A few months after moving to Frederick, he and his then-wife returned to their hometown, and Chris began working in a local factory.
Then, one day, a friend of his who worked at White Oak Mills called him and asked him if he wanted to work on a 600-head calf-to-fattener farm in nearby Carlisle.
“I started out skinning pigs in the pig barn – that was my job,” Chris says, “I worked in the fattening barn, loading pigs and within six months I was made assistant manager. Within a year I was asked to work for another feed company and manage their farm in Middle Creek, Lancaster County.”
He ran the business, then owned by Penfield, for four years. “Our production was really good and we got noticed,” Chris says.
Standing Alone
When the farm where they now raise hogs was put up for sale by the sheriff in 1993, Chris put together a proposal to buy the land. Leon Hoover, the owner of the Penfield facility, threw down the gauntlet to Chris.
“He said, 'Chris, if this happens, I'll buy the animals and put them out there,'” he says. “We had very little money, so the owners wrote letters to the bank on my behalf.”
He bought the farm, demolished the two finishing barns and built a piglet barn with room for 600 sows. Huber bought the animals. Chris kept the existing finishing barn and reopened it as “Sow Palace.”
“So speaking of Proposition 12, I had Proposition 12 in 1994,” he says. “I raise sows, put them in a pigpen, and they stay there for 49 days. Then they move into the pigpen. When they're ready to farrow, they go back into the farrowing pen and the babies are put into the nursery. We did really well in those four years and were able to pay off our debt.”
In the late 1990s, Hoover got out of the hog business. Chris found a partner in Purina, who was looking for a sow facility to invest in. Chris built a 1,000-box gestation house to raise pigs from piglets to weaners. But Purina also needed a pig farm, so he bought 35 acres of land next to an old house. He built a pig farm and isolation sheds and converted it into a pig farm that would house 1,400 sows and raise piglets from piglets to finishers.
After a change in management at Purina, Chris was asked by Wengers to manage another farm across the mountain from his own. Chris operated a farrow-to-ship barn with 1,500 sows and was asked to manage other farms owned by the company. From 2000 to 2004, Chris managed eight sow farms housing 10,000 sows at a time with 53 employees.
He resigned and returned to his hometown to run his own farm, but was approached by Smithfield Foods to manage their farm in 2006. In 2008, he began managing a 100-acre hog fattening facility near Lewistown, which he later purchased.
Then in 2012, he bought two chicken coops across from the pig farm.
The Beginnings of Lazy Hog Farm
In 2018, Country View Family Farm, where Chris raised pigs, changed direction of the business, and the following year Chris purchased a herd of pigs and Lazy Hog Farm was officially born.
He now raises 1,200 sows and over 30,000 weaners a year, is 100% self-sufficient, raises 4,000 fattening pigs at a time and sells them through Raidy's, and raises 45,000 chickens under contract with Empire Kosher.
He owns 250 acres of land, including 60 acres of woodland. All of the land is rented out to other farmers, with the condition that they use manure from the farm as fertilizer.
“It's a low input for the farmer, and fertilizer is an expense for me,” Chris says, “but it also becomes a source of income for the farmer. The farmer gets a really good, high-yielding crop, so we work out what we pay them and what the farmer costs through a win-win program. In some cases, the crop is sent to a factory where I buy feed from. So it's like a cycle: I buy feed, the farmer produces a crop, and our fertilizer gets put in the soil. So it's like a closed cycle. I call it the circle of life.”
Being an independent producer isn't easy, he says, and the past few years have been especially difficult given the weak pork market and rising input prices.
“We don't have any pricing authority. We have to constantly try to stay ahead of rising feed prices and things like that. It takes a lot of management to keep this going,” says Chris. “Understanding production is really important because it relates to pigs per sow, which means pigs shipped. The better I can do that, the better the opportunity to ship more pounds. That's what money is. Efficiency, all of those things are really important. It's the little things we have to work for to make a profit that add up to cents on the dollar.”
So what's my advice to anyone wanting to become an independent producer? Think small.
“It's not as hard as you think. It's a different world now,” Chris says. “When I started, I could never say, 'Hey, I've got these pigs and I want to sell them to you. I raised them. I raised them on my family farm. I want to sell them for this much.' Now it's all about the consumer. Consumers are willing to pay more. Now you could have 100 sows and support your family just by selling direct to the consumer.”
Farmer spokesman
Chris's business is raising pigs, but outside of agriculture he may be known as the face of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, where he is chairman and travels the state promoting agriculture and visiting farmers.
“I think I'm successful because I can bring a real sense of reality to what's happening in agriculture,” he says. “I'm always happy to have a discussion, whether you agree with me or not. It's about putting the facts on the table and saying, 'Here's why we're doing it, here's why we need to do it.' It's really about creating a system where everyone is really involved and on board.”
Getting involved in the community was something he learned early on. “When I first bought the farm, the community was against me,” Chris says, “but now they accept me. I got involved in a lot of things to make myself in the community's interest.”
Along with Farm Bureau, Chris has served on the Penn State Board of Trustees since 2015, which allowed him to present his son Christian with his diploma when he graduated from Penn State Harrisburg in 2019. “That was the greatest thing I've ever done. It was an honor to give him his diploma,” he says.
Christian found work on the farm during the pandemic and now works full time for Chris, with plans to one day become the next owner.
In 2019, Chris was awarded America’s Pork Farmer of the Year by the National Pork Association.
“I never thought I'd have the chance in the world to receive this award,” he said. “I'm just a little guy from Pennsylvania, but it's truly an honor to represent our farm, our family and our community.”
But regardless of the awards he receives or the public image of himself as the face of agriculture, Chris is happy to be in the business and has no regrets, even though it's been a long and winding journey he never expected.
“I'm first generation, so I didn't have any savings. It's been tough,” he says, “but I just love being here. Sitting here and looking at the mountains. Being able to work with my son. That kind of thing makes it worth being here.”
Chris Hoffman Profile
Surgery: Lazy Hog Farm LLC, McAllisterville, Pa., which raises 1,200 sows and more than 30,000 weaner pigs, 4,000 finisher pigs and 45,000 kosher chickens annually.
familyWife, Selina Hoffman, son, Christian Hoffman.
Agriculture and Community Involvement: Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Commissioner, Chairman of the PFB Agriculture Foundation, Board Member of the Pennsylvania Pork Producers Council, Trustee of Pennsylvania State University, Member of the Pennsylvania State Grange, Member of Good News Church, Former Chairman of the County Republican Committee, and recipient of the 2019-20 American Pork Farmer of the Year Award from the National Pork Council.
