Less than 50 miles west of the original Homan family homestead in Maria Stein, Ohio, Brian Homan has been busy building a swine empire of his own in Indiana. Homan is the fourth generation of farmers stemming from the original quartet of brothers who ventured to America in 1855 from Germany. More than 150 years later, the Homan family legacy is still holding strong.
“When I was 4 to 5 years old, riding with Grandpa was the highlight of my life,” says Homan, who recalls it was his grandfather, Dennis, who first recognized his interest in farming at a young age. “Grandpa told my dad one night, ‘That boy’s gonna farm. You’re gonna need some ground.’”
Dennis was a farmer himself in the 1970s, and over time, he gradually shifted his focus toward building an equipment business. Still, he remained committed to farming, using any disposable income to purchase farmland across the state line in Indiana.
Homan’s dad, Roger, bought Dennis’ business in the ’80s. Roger was the oldest of five boys, three of whom had already begun farming in the Hoosier State. At the age of 16, Homan began his grain farming venture just a few miles from his uncles.
“I grain farmed until I was about 20 years old,” Homan says. “Then, I came to the conclusion I needed to do something more.”
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Hoosier Hogs
With one uncle already contract growing swine, Homan began exploring the possibilities. In 2002 at age 21, he moved to Pennville and built his first two barns, which held 2,000 head of swine each.
In contract growing, a farmer enters a contract with a parent company to raise the animals. The company takes the majority of the economic risk while the grower handles day-to-day livestock care according to the company’s guidelines. Growers receive a predetermined rate for their product, eliminating much of the market risks.
Homan explains that contract growing is a very common process for chickens, turkeys and hogs, with very few folks growing independently. After the hog market crashed in the late ’80s, contract growing became especially appealing for many producers.
For most of his career, Homan has contracted with Oracle Pork, a division of Indiana Packers Corporation. With five different contracting entities to choose from in Jay County alone, Homan says what he likes most about Oracle is its personnel and the focus on pig health.
In 2006, due to grain prices, Homan officially stopped grain farming and narrowed his focus solely to swine production, adding another barn for a total of 8,000 feeder pigs. A few years later, the barns were converted to wean-to-finish barns.
“I get them in as weaned pigs, around 15 pounds, and then feed them out to 280 pounds in six months,” Homan says.
Thanks to improvements in technology in the last 15 years, Homan can manage much of his operation himself with only one full-time employee.
“With a click of a button on my phone, I can see how much water they drank, see how much feed they’ve used and turn fans on and off,” Homan says.
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Family Matters
Homan met his partner, Jessica, in 2008. Together, they have a daughter, Isabelle, and a son, John, who enjoy helping on the farm.
After adding another two barns in 2018 as well as managing a couple of barns built in conjunction with his parents and siblings, Homan now has 20,000 hogs under his care on any given day, rotating 40,000 hogs in and out of his barns each year. Alongside four of his uncles and several cousins who also raise the split-hooved animals, the Homan family has an output of 200,000 head of hogs to market each year.
For Homan, no two days on the farm are the same, with responsibilities including barn maintenance, grass mowing, checking pigs and a never-ending pile of paperwork.
But the work has paid off with recognition through the years. In 2016, Homan won Oracle Pork’s Grower Award, which is voted on by their technicians. Then, in 2024, he won Indiana Pork’s Contract Grower Award.
With so many family members in the same business, Homan says they frequently swap equipment back and forth and help each other out where they can. Even more impressive, the whole Homan family – the five brothers and grandma, along with the kids, grandkids and great-grandkids – still get together back in Maria Stein each year.
Homan’s dad remodeled the barn, originally built on the property in 1872, and it has since been turned into an event venue by his brother and sister-in-law. This is where their family gathers for the holidays and special events.
“Family reunions are more like a business meeting,” Homan says. “We all talk farming when we get together, sometimes well into the night.”
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