Sandy Road Farms buys assets of Kansas Smith Farms

Eddie Crum has been quietly building up his sow base for 20 years. Crum, the owner of Sandy Road Farms, Lamar, Colorado, now has 21,800 sows after buying the assets of Kansas Smith Farms, Plains, Kansas, yesterday.

Kansas Smith Farms was founded when Ernest Smith Farms of Garland, North Carolina, purchased an old DeKalb Swine Breeders farrow-to-finish unit of 9,000 sows in 2003. The farm built up to about 14,000 sows until lenders took possession more than a year ago.

Crum is remodeling the complex to a wean-to-finish setup. There is still one 1,400-sow genetic unit, a boar stud, and a 6,000-sow farrow-to-wean unit on the complex with another 2,600 unit planned. Sandy Road Farms also has sows in Colorado and Oklahoma. The company has a hog purchase agreement with Seaboard Foods for the pigs.

Crum is working with Steve Weiss, president and cofounder of NutriQuest, Mason City, Iowa, on the nutrition side of the venture. Crum has stayed out of the limelight since he was CEO of ValAdCo, a farmer-owned, 15,000-sow, farrow-to-finish cooperative near Renville, Minnesota, which sold to Christensen Farms in 2001.