By Katijane Shoffner

Photos by Amy Sanders & Katijane Shoffner

“They don’t sell our bacon in grocery stores,” unlike what you might think when you drive by the sign outside their main headquarters in Henry, TN. “When I was in college I had a professor who called me ‘Tosh by gosh.’ You don’t want your name on trucks, so I named our trucks that we use to haul our products Bacon By Gosh. We have people that stop by our office all the time wanting to buy bacon.” Mr. Jimmy Tosh told us, laughing. The Bacon By Gosh trucks are just a part of their company.  Tosh Farms is a family-owned business.  The business consists of three separate enterprises working together in a synergistic fashion.  Tosh Farms is a general partnership and their crop production company, Tosh Pork, LLC is their swine production company, and Bacon By Gosh, Inc. is their transportation company. All three are a part of the company that the Tosh family and their employees have built.

Tosh Farms is home to the largest pork production system operation in Tennessee. All pigs produced by Tosh Pork go to Louisville to be processed by JBS USA. JBS sells to Costco and Kroger, with Costco being their biggest customer. Pork brands to look for are Swift, Swift Premium, and 1855—who knows, you might be eating a hog raised in West Tennessee! Tosh Farms sell over a million hogs per year with most going to JBS.

“We’ve got 32,000 sows right now in units in Madisonville, KY, Franklin, KY, Huntland, TN, Martin, TN and two more around Henry,” Mr. Tosh told us in a phone interview. Tosh Farms take care of their sows, making sure their needs are met. Lots of work, time, and effort go into making sure the females are well taken care of as they do their jobs.

“At our farrowing units, we raise pigs to about 22-23 days of age, then they are weaned, and they go to a wean-to-market barn. We have barns located throughout West KY and Northwestern TN. The pigs go into these barns at about 14-15 pounds. They stay there for about 4 to 5 months before they head off to market.”

“When I got out of college, I started farming with my Dad.” Mr. Tosh told us about his farm that now has about 19,000 acres in row crops. “My Grandaddy, A. L. Tosh, started this operation in 1913 when he moved from Carroll County to Henry County. He was followed by my Dad in the farming operation, then me, and now I have a couple of kids, and three grandkids from age 15 down to age 4 in this farm, so it’s five generations. I got out of college and started farming. We had about 600-700 acres then, and I bought a few finishing pigs. We didn’t even have any sows until the mid ‘90s. I had no idea that we’d get as big as we have. We bought a few feeder pigs and started growing. I saw the industry was changing and I either had to get big or get out. A lot of pig farmers in Tennessee got out, but I stayed in. It’s just grown from there. We have lots of benefits from being in Tennessee: reasonable grain prices, pretty good weather, good tax environment, and one of the biggest advantages is that there aren't a lot of pigs around us, so we don’t deal with the disease spread that they have in the midwest.” Tosh continued, “We have plans to add more sow units, building a new sow unit in Carroll county and adding to a unit in Franklin, KY. We’ll be adding about 7,000 sows, but will be taking an older, outdated unit out of production, which will end up as a net increase of 5,000 sows.”

What would I tell someone getting out of college now that wants to farm? “Well, that’s a difficult situation because of the capital needed to invest. There are some beginning farmer programs out there, or you could partner with an older farmer that needs some help, build that relationship and maybe take over when he retires. One thing’s for sure about agriculture is that it takes a lot of capital to farm; it’s capital intensive. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I would strongly suggest that any new farmer get a degree in business, just to have a good background.”

Tosh also supports the FFA. In addition to the perennial support of local FFA chapters, Tosh is always willing to open his doors to students from across the country. “We’ve got six state officers coming from an Oregon FFA chapter. Their advisor used to work in this state and they are touring our facility.”

How did they deal with COVID? In the early days of COVID, lots of farms were worried about liquidating or euthanizing pigs and cattle. “We didn’t have to liquidate pigs, we ended up putting them on a maintenance diet so they wouldn’t grow so fast, and we were able to handle them until the processing plants were able to get back to full production.” He added, “We did have cases of COVID in our workers, but it hasn’t affected us like it has in other places.”

To the Tosh family: Thank you for allowing us a small window into the large farming operation you all have, and for letting us share how important a role you play in feeding us all.

Side note: We checked with Farm Credit because we had heard they might have something to help beginning farmers. In addition to starter loans, they have access to some great programs for beginning farmers, even classes to help with things like business plans, making sure your cash flow is flowing, and other things that help you keep profitable when you are just starting out. They are also a part of The Beginning Farmers and Ranchers project, which is a joint effort of Farm Foundation, USDA and the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) to examine issues that either hinder or facilitate the entry of beginning farmers and ranchers into the agricultural sector, as well as the factors that lead to their success or failure.

“We started out as a small family farm.  We’re still a family farm, we’re just a larger family farm.” – Jimmy Tosh, CEO