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Coporate Farming Provides Jobs

By: DAN MIHALOPOULOS
State Capital Bureau
May 09, 1995

NOTE: Sidebar to main story HOGS1.HTM.

PRINCETON, Mo. _ When Jeff Gittings graduated from high school in Milan, Mo., eight years ago, he and all but 10 or 15 students in his class left northern Missouri to look for work in the cities.

Gittings, 26, said he worked at everything from telemarketing to construction. Two and a half years ago, he was working on a feed lot in Nebraska before returning home to a job with Premium Standard Farms, a pork-producing giant.

After beginning as a "power washer," cleaning out barns, Gittings quickly advanced to running a farm. Today, he supervises 41 workers at a PSF production site five minutes from his hometown. Many of his high school chums, Gittings said, took the same path.

PSF's arrival in northern Missouri has created more than 1,000 jobs. Many locals, exiled by the region's depressed economy, have returned since PSF set up shop in 1989.

Putting up with smell of hogs is worth the chance to live near home and work at a job he enjoys, Gittings said.

"I hate to say that I'm used to it," he said, flashing a boyish grin. "But when you're dealing with livestock, it comes with the territory."

The farm crisis of the early 1980s forced Jim Mason of Princeton to quit farming in 1986 and hit the road. He sold dog food for three years and peddled feed for another three. His son had to quit college.

"We lost everything it took 24 years to get," Mason said. "We were left with our clothes and our furniture. There was no reason to be here. There were no jobs."

Now, Mason, his two sons, his daughter and a daughter-in-law all work for PSF. The family recently built an addition that doubled the size of their home outside Princeton.

"PSF came in and gave us jobs," Mason said. "Now we eat well, survive. If it hadn't been for PSF, we'd be scattered all over. You don't realize what family means until you're scattered."