Meet John Hays
John Hays has been farming for over 40 years and is a fifth-generation farmer in west-central Indiana where he now farms with his wife Jenny and their three grown children and families. John knew at a very early age that farming was his passion in life. Before he was old enough to be out in the field working, he spent countless hours with his mother in the family garden growing produce and very specifically focusing on building soil health in the garden plots via growing cover crops when a produce crop was not growing. He was heavily influenced by his grandfather and uncles who were organic farmers and always looking for the best way to steward the land without using expensive and harmful commercial inputs.
John got a job with a local dairy farm at age 12 helping put up hay in the summer and quickly moved into milking the cows before and after school. He saved his earnings from this job and bought his own equipment and began renting his parents tillable ground raising cash crops while focusing on building soil health using cover crops. He also raised pigs and cattle and marketed the meat directly to local consumers while continuing to work on local dairies throughout high school.
John married his high school sweetheart, Jenny, at the age of 19 and they began their own journey in life and agriculture. They discontinued the farming operation John had built in high school due to financial reasons.
He began working for a local grain and hog farmer and that led him into the commercial confined swine production business where he spent nearly 20 years managing, training and teaching others the best methods known within the commercial pig business. He was deeply involved in the successfully bringing artificial insemination into common practice on large CAFO’s in the 1990’s throughout many parts of the Midwest and eastern plains states teaching and consulting with producers about how to best manage these production systems. That led him full circle back to where he worked just after high school managing a what would now be considered a small farrow to finish family farm.
About 2010, John began managing a local trucking company while still managing the commercial hog operation and his family’s hay and grass-fed beef business. He made the decision to give up commercial hog production and focus on the other two businesses: trucking and hay and grass-fed beef. The trucking business has grown and been very successful under his leadership. His farming operation has taken a very different turn since 2020. Once he saw what continuous haying was doing to soil health, he began contemplating what to do to better steward the land and this is where his regenerative journey really got the momentum that he had been looking for his entire life.
Since then, John and family have converted all of their ground to perennial pasture and are now adaptively grazing cattle, pigs, laying hens and meat chickens on their farm very intentionally to advance soil health and build resiliency. The meats produced are all marketed directly to consumers in central Indiana and throughout the rest of the U.S. under Hays Family Farm.
Your partner in regenerative agriculture
By following the 6-3-4TM Understanding Ag teaches, we are seeing amazing results in improved soil health and function on our own operation while eliminating nearly all purchased inputs. We have drastically reduced the amount of hay we are feeding the cattle and are getting near our goal of not having to feed any hay. Production continues to go up along with profitability, and we are seeing our pastures become more resilient.
We are working with other area producers and landowners to help them begin their own path down this regenerative journey. There is so much knowledge within the Understanding Ag team and I am very excited and honored to be part of it to help spread this knowledge in every way possible. I am once again excited about the future of agriculture. I see so many opportunities if we will just be open minded and willing to try something different than what we’ve always been taught. If it can be done wrong, I have done it in the past, and I hope to share the many things I have learned throughout life with others, so they don’t have to make all the mistakes that I have. I truly see things differently now that I have a better understanding of how to steward our natural resources. I am a life-long learner and my goal as an Understanding Ag consultant is to share knowledge and to help others along this path of regeneration in any way that I can. We can truly make a healthier world to live in and pass on to future generations through regenerative agriculture. I’m eager to help in any way that I can.
Contact John at: jhays@understandingag.com
