Like many young farmers, Travis Dixon first worked off the farm, but his passion for raising row crops never wavered. However, it took a leap of faith into pork production to gain those acres.

For years, the Audain County, Mo., farmer felt like he had one foot in a boat and one foot on the dock. A rock quarry engineer by trade, his heart was on the farm, taking vacation time just to work on the family operation or run a tractor for his neighbor.

His passion was agriculture, but he simply couldn’t see a path to make it happen for himself. Then one day, he and his wife, Bethany, attended a cursillo with a theme of, “Let go and let God.”

At first, it was hard to let go of his worry about ever getting his own farm, but Travis made a commitment at that conference to surrender this decision to God. And then the unthinkable happened; some may call it divine.

“A week later, I was approached at Sunday School, oddly enough, by a guy saying, ‘Have you thought about going into hogs?’” Travis says. “I almost laughed him out of the room.”

The answer on the tip of his tongue was, “No.”

Hesitant over hog production

The Dixon family raised hogs in the 1990s, when the entire market collapsed. Travis remembered what that was like and did not want to revisit those days, let alone with a growing family.

However, the gentleman reaffirmed that this type of hog farming was different and urged him to look at the opportunities with contract hog production.

“Really, all the hog farms in our area are small guys that have started from scratch, or didn't have a place on their family farm,” Travis says. “That was me.”

Travis and Bethany relied on faith, took their foot off the dock and jumped into the boat with a 7,340-head hog operation. His once hazy dreams of full-time farming were coming into focus.

Move to row crops

In 2022, raising hogs was only part of this unorthodox path to row crop farming, which was neither a straight nor easy path for the Missouri young farmers.

“I was doing everything I could to turn some money,” Travis says. He did custom work applying anhydrous ammonia and other odd jobs.

The couple had another turn in the road. Travis’ grandfather passed away, and the small family farm became available.

“It was either buy the whole thing, or it was going to auction,” Travis says. “I wanted to save it.”

After meetings with lending institutions, FCS Financial agreed to back the young farmers. They were able to purchase everything — house, bins, sheds and tools — and finally start the dream of row crop production. That was five years ago.

Today, the Dixons turned 400 acres into 1,500 acres, and next year should be a little over 2,000 acres — either through owning or renting the land.

Travis employs ridge till for flat land and cover crops for erosion-prone hills. He manages his acres with precision technology like in-furrow nutrition. “I like to say that we spoon-feed our acres — we put the right thing out at the right time in the right way,” he says.

The Dixons conduct on-farm trials and share the results with other farmers. Always pushing forward, Travis wants to figure out new and innovative ways to maximize crop management practices while regenerating the soil.

“We’re in the business of pennies,” Travis explains. “We need to figure out how to maximize what we have because if we can’t pick up more ground, we need to raise more on what we have.”

“It’s about using the right resources,” Bethany adds, “and making them better.”

Tough financial decision

The hog business built the equity to afford a crop farm, but the Dixons had yet another encounter: They were asked if they wanted to sell the barns.

“Truly, that hog farm built us,” Bethany adds. “It was the one thing that brought us home as full-time farmers.”

The offer was for the exact amount it took to build them. “We prayed and prayed about it,” Travis says. “I knew I could take it and lift the debt on the homeplace and have it paid off.”

The couple decided to sell the hog barns and exit that farm enterprise.

The two believe that sometimes individuals are called to do what they may not want to do, but it leads them to the right place.

“People will tell you that a lot of things are impossible, that it was impossible to break into farming from scratch,” Travis adds. “I’m here to tell you they are wrong. It can be done.”

Travis and Bethany Dixon received the 2024 National Outstanding Young Farmers Award by the Outstanding Farmers of America in February. Every year, the group chose four farmers, all younger than age 41, to achieve its highest honor in the oldest farmer recognition program in the U.S., which started in 1955.