"John and Jill Mahan are one of the many young farm families in the Bluegrass who have embraced diversi
fication and technology to keep the family farm alive. In an interview with agriculture columnist Kara Keeton, the Mahans talk about their farm family background and the successes and challenges of the farming business. The interview has been edited for space. Find the complete conversation as a BizCast online at www.bizlex.com.
KK: we are excited to have John and Jill Mahan here. The Mahans are known for having a strong agricultural background and being active farmers in this area. So tell me a little bit about your family and how your family has been involved in agriculture.
John M: Kara, you are exactly right — the agriculture roots run very deep in the Mahan family. I am a fourth-generation farmer here in Fayette County. Our home place was bought in 1932, my great grandfather started farming there, and before I moved farms, that is where I began my farming operation.
KK: Where was the original family farm?
John M: The home farm is over on Nicholasville Road at Man O' War and is surrounded by development. We have done some 1031 tax-free land exchanges and have moved the farm north out onto Russell Cave so that I could expand my farming operation.
KK: How long have you been on Russell Cave Road?
John M: We have been on Russell Cave for 11 years now. When we made that transition, it was a good time for Dad to retire, so when we moved out here, Dad turned the operation over to me and gave me an opportunity to sink or swim. We've been very fortunate and had a lot of luck, and we've made quite a go of it.
KK: How many acres are you farming out here now?
John M: Jill and I currently are farming about 2,000 acres in Fayette, Scott, Bourbon and Harrison County.
KK: That is quite a bit for only two to oversee and run.
John M: There is never a dull moment, but I have a lot of good help. Jill is my partner, and she helps with all the administrative, books and payroll. I oversee the day-to-day management of the operation, and I have incredibly good employees. I could not do what I do without them. They are very talented and dedicated.
KK: You were farming full-time when you met Jill. Jill, are you from an agriculture background?
Jill M: Yes, I am. I was raised on a grain crop farm in Ohio. My family runs about 3,000 acres of corn, wheat and beans, so I knew what I was getting into.
I was in the wireless industry after I graduated from school, in sales management and customer management. We were married in January 2004, and in March, I left that industry to come work with John full time on the farm.
KK: Tell me a little about the diversity on the farm. I know that the Mahans had a large tobacco base, and how have you diversified away from that in your operation over the years?
John M: Well, Kara, tobacco is still important, and we still produce tobacco. In the late '90s, as you know, they began cutting our quotas, and I saw that it was time to make a change. In 2000, I started producing turf grass. That was a way I could stay on the farm, produce an agriculture product and capture the consumer dollar. That has been one of the most lucrative diversifications we have done.
One of the other things we do is we recycle horse muck. Part of the farm here is leased out to a Thoroughbred operation, so we take the straw that they clean out of the stalls every day and we dry it and re-bale it and sell it to landscaping operations. That is a way we take a product on our farm and sell it twice, because we sell the horse operation the straw originally that they use to bed the stalls with. We also bale alfalfa hay that is sold here on the farm to the horse operation.
So the main goal has been to vertically integrate to capture as many dollars as we can here on the farm and keep those dollars turning. Whereas with corn and beans, that price is based off the Chicago board of trade and you are told each day what that crop is worth, with these other products (sod and horse muck) we can set the market and we can control our destiny a little better.
KK: It is amazing to see how you have diversified, especially into an area such as sod production. Why did you choose sod?
John M: Well, my brother has a construction company. In the late '90s, I knew they were laying some sod and they had been buying it from another company and it caught my attention. I knew that was something I could grow on the farm.
In 2000, we started with 10 acres and we harvested that and sold it to my brother, and he captured the entire market for what we produced. It took about two years before we started building our clientele to where we were not only producing the sod, but we were going into town and doing the grading and laying of the sod also. Since 2000, we have grown over 350 acres of grass.
KK: How many employees do you have in your operation now?
John M: Well, the sod business and the farm are separate companies, but they are managed and run together. Because the same employees work on the farm and sod business for the most part, there is a lot of overlap.
We have 25 employees, 14 of which are legal seasonal migrant workers through the H2A program. The remaining full-time local people have been with us for some time. The migrant labor works in tobacco, and they work in the hay and sod. That's what makes our operation work so well and efficiently is that I can overlap all this labor and spread my labor costs over the enterprises and be more profitable.
KK: Last year you won an award, the American Farm Bureau Achievement Award. Has that award allowed you to travel and speak out about agriculture issues?
John M: Winning the award is part of it, but we were also placed on the American Farm Bureau young farmer and rancher committee, which is an advisory-type committee that has been the reason for most of our travel lately and allowed us to be a voice for agriculture.
KK: One of the challenges the industry faces is education and making people aware of the fact that every time you take a bite of food you are impacted by the immigration issues, you are impacted by legislation like the farm bill. How have you been the voice for agriculture in this position?
Jill M: We have always been vocal about agriculture and letting people know about it and the importance of it. Being on this advisory committee has been huge because we are on the committee with people from other states across the nation. It is our job, our responsibility as farmers, as people in agriculture, not only to protect the land but to get out there and educate to remind people that food wasn't grown in the grocery store.
KK: We have talked about the diversity of Kentucky agriculture, with the loss of tobacco. Where do you see the future of agriculture in Kentucky, and as a young farmer, what do you see as the key issues you will be facing and other young farmers will be facing in the future?
John M: That's a tough question. If you had asked me that 10 years ago, I would have never dreamed I would be recycling horse manure, and I never thought I would be in the sod business. My dream was to have a combine and raise corn and beans; that was all I wanted to do. But that wasn't the opportunities I was faced with.
The equine business in Central Kentucky is crucial to our economy, and we need to continue to cultivate that industry and be fair to that industry. I feel like they need to have the same tax incentives and breaks as traditional agriculture.
The face of agriculture will continue to change as it has over the past generations. We don't farm the way my dad or my grandfathers. We now use GPS on our sprayers, and we map our fields according to how they yield. It is ever changing, and I honestly can't tell you how technology will change and impact agriculture.
I do know that people are always going to eat, and I suspect that people are always going to smoke. I feel like in Kentucky there will always be a demand for our burley tobacco and there will always be a demand for food. Kentucky's climate we have seen is very suitable for many of those crops, so it really depends on a person's interest and how hard a person wants to work.
KK: Speaking of technology changes, I think many people view farming as an uneducated profession — anyone can farm, but farming is a business. Tell me a little bit about how you have approached it as a business and the challenges you have faced having a business in the ag industry.
John M: At the end of the day, it is a family farm, but it is run every day like a business. I mean every entity has to make money, and you have to analyze that P&L statement every month and every year. You have to make changes on the fly. If an enterprise you are doing does not make money, you can't keep doing that. It is my challenge as the manager and owner to analyze that each year and make changes.
This year in particular, I sold all our beef cattle. We have always had a cow/calf herd, and I sold all the beef cattle this spring and planted all the farm in row crops. As you know, with the ethanol production up, corn and bean prices have been up, and we locked in some high prices and we planted the entire farm in corn and beans. That is a drastic change; most people don't make a 90-degree turn like that and go from one enterprise to another, but I penciled it and I saw it would work and we made the change to capture the opportunity.
KK: You are seeing this more and more with our young farmers; they are willing to take those risks because they recognize it as a business.
John M: That is exactly right. Fayette County is very blessed with young farmers. There are quite a few of us. Several in the tobacco business, several in the beef cattle business, whether that is a cow/calf operation on the farm or order buyers at the stockyards. We have a strong group of young farmers in Fayette County, and they need to be recognized and commended for what they are doing.
We operate on very small margins, and most of our assets are tied up in the land that we farm. So those young people that are really making a go of it and committed to ag should be commended for the job they are doing.
KK: Part of it is business, but would you say another part is the love of agriculture?
Jill M: It is the drive.
John M: It is the passion.
Jill M: It is the passion. I've always said some people are born to be doctors, born to be lawyers, some born to be race car drivers. I think to be a farmer, you have to have that core love. You wouldn't do it if that wasn't your soul. "