Farms.com Home  › News

Hoogland Named Chief Production Officer at Iowa Select Farms

Iowa Select Farms announced Marlin Hoogland, DVM, as its new chief production officer. Hoogland will lead all production areas in this role as of Aug. 17, including gene transfer centers, multiplication, gilt development, sow production, wean-to-finish operations, research, nutrition, feed services and production well-being, the company said in a release.

Iowa Select Farms, the largest pork producer in Iowa, has 242,000 sows and annually produces over 1.5 billion pounds of pork. 

Hoogland previously served as the vice president of research, nutrition and business innovation at Smithfield Foods. Before taking on the role of vice president, he was the lead veterinarian for over 12 years and oversaw veterinary services for the Midwest region.

A distinguished alumnus of Iowa State University, Hoogland graduated with his DVM from Iowa State University in 2005 and the University of Illinois' Executive Veterinary Program in 2009.

Click here to see more...

Trending Video

Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms



Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment