Intentionally Innovative, Raised Stock

In the early morning hours before dawn, long before most people would be up, a young man goes about the daily task of feeding the animals that could change the world.

Growing up on his family farm was the starting point of his career in the animal industry, said Caleb Grohmann, Ph.D. student at the University of Missouri.

“That’s where it all started,” Grohmann said.

Cedar Ridge Farms got their start in 1954 raising Landrace and quickly moved to add Duroc, Hampshire, Yorkshire, and most recently, Berkshire pigs to the herd, Grohmann said. Currently, their focus is on selling commercial swine genetics, Grohmann said.

“Our goal is to provide seedstock domestically — and sometimes even more importantly, internationally — for other commercial pork producers who like to continue to increase the efficiency and productivity of either their maternal or terminal pig herds,” Grohmann said.

His family was involved in the National Swine Registry since its beginning, Grohmann said. In the early 2010s, Grohmann and his family became solely focused on  selling commercial pigs as opposed to showpigs for biosecurity purposes, he said.

Coming from mainly a commercial pig farming background, Grohmann became interested in joining the National Junior Swine Association junior board because of his experiences in the show ring, he said. He wanted to share his experiences in the commercial swine industry with the kids in the show world, he said.

Grohmann was on the NJSA junior board 2016-2018 as an at-large director while he worked to earn his bachelor’s in animal science at the University of Missouri, he said. Grohmann added that he was a part of NJSA through grade school and high school.

Even in high school, Grohmann said he planned to get a Ph.D. His desire to achieve this came from his inquisitive mind, Grohmann said.

“I’ve always wanted to learn more and more and more, and that mindset is really conducive to continuing your education,” Grohmann said.

In 2020, Grohmann completed his master’s in animal science at the University of Illinois, he said. He started his Ph.D. program later that year and is continuing his training today, Grohmann said. Grohmann’s doctorate is in informatics and data science, he said.

“He told me he was not going to do animal science, he was going to do data science instead,” said Timothy Safranski, University of Missouri state swine extension specialist and professor of animal science, “and I was very glad he said that because it allowed me to help him find that if he wanted to he could do data science with animal science.

“He was not afraid to walk away from animal science to learn a skill he thought the industry could benefit from,” Safranski said. “His intention was to learn data science and then go back and apply it to agriculture.”

Grohmann is intentional in the steps he takes to move his career forward, said Jared Decker, Wurdack chair in animal genomics, associate professor and Grohmann’s Ph.D. adviser.

“There’s not a lot of people with the combination of drive and interest in data, with a broad set of swine production experience and the ability to keep things practical,” said Caleb Shull, The Maschhoffs research and development director and Grohmann’s industry mentor. “So, he is a unique individual in that regard.”

Many people in the agricultural industry talk about feeding 10 million people by 2050 and the way to do that is through innovation, Grohmann said.

“We have to have smart, talented kids with a passion for pigs to be able to create that innovation and the NJSA is the perfect place to find that type of person,” Grohmann said.

As a junior board at-large director, Grohmann strove to find youth in the NJSA who were passionate about pigs in general and get them acquainted and exposed to the commercial swine industry and the opportunities that lie there, he said. The goal was to take their passion for the show industry and transfer it into a successful career with pigs on the commercial side of things, Grohmann said.

He was proud they could get something started there, Grohmann said.

“He is wired to set things up to be successful,” Shull said.

Grohmann demands perfection even on the smallest scale, Shull said.

“Caleb definitely knows when it’s time to have the nose to the grindstone and work hard.” Decker said. “But he also has a great personality, loves to joke with people, and is just really personable and easy to get along with.”

He was never Grohmann’s official adviser, but there were many times during his bachelor’s and now during his Ph.D. training where the two talked about his education, Safranski said.

“As a faculty member, if every student cared as much about their education as Caleb did, teaching would be easy and everybody would want to do it,” Safranski said.

Grohmann’s research is funded by The Maschhoffs and the USDA Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Fellowship Program, Decker said.

The Maschhoffs is one of the largest family-owned hog production companies in North America, according to themaschhoffs.com. The family farm started as an orchard in the late 1930s, and by 1961, the livestock/mixed crop enterprise added on a 700-head finishing barn. Currently, the family farm now boasts more than 200,000 sows and has a 9-state footprint.

“The Maschhoffs sell about 3.8 million pigs annually, across multiple states,” Shull said.

The Maschhoffs pork feeds approximately 15 million people each year, Grohmann said.

“We try to support talented folks who have a bright future and his is certainly one we have put a lot of stock in,” Shull said. “He’s done really well so far.”

FFAR was created to strengthen young food and agricultural scientists through professional development and career guidance, according to ffarfellows.org.

Grohmann said he is extremely humbled and honored to be selected as a FFAR Fellow where he can continue to do what he loves in terms of research and improving the swine industry. He said this is the perfect avenue for his future career and to gain a group of peers he will value for the rest of his life. Grohmann was selected in the spring of 2021 and started officially in August of 2021, he said.

“My cohort is in the FFAR Fellowship Program from 2021 to 2024,” Grohmann said. “So, it’s a three-year fellowship.”

He will graduate with his Ph.D. around the same time this fellowship program ends, Grohmann said. His doctorate work is broad and multidisciplinary, he said.

“Really what I’m trying to do is apply data science to fine breeding and management,” Grohmann said.

Grohmann said his project is threefold at the moment.

The first portion of his research project is genomic selection mapping, Grohmann said. He studies changes in the genomic architecture of The Maschhoff’s nucleus and commercial test herd to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, in their genome that have changed significantly in allele frequency over time due to selection on quantitative traits, Grohmann said. These might be reproductive, terminal, growth efficiency, or carcass traits, Grohmann said.

This allows them to identify regions of the animal’s DNA that are responding to selection decisions on complex quantitative traits, Decker said.

The second portion of his project is on increasing the accuracy of genomic prediction for various traits, Grohmann said.

Grohmann will be creating more sophisticated models for these predictions, Decker said. These would take into account the context or management environment that the pig is in and how this influences production, Decker said.

In the third and final portion of his research, the project will focus on utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence to predict production outcomes in wean-to-market pig barns, Grohmann said. This project will incorporate data from many sources, including sensors, images and even video, Grohmann said.  Using this approach, there is potential to build systems that can aid pig farmers in critical decision making across the entire pig production cycle, he added.  

“I will be looking at some sensor data from wean-to-market barns to see if we can use environmental data collected through sensors to predict high mortality events and high morbidity events in the period of time where there is a lot of treatment activity,” Grohmann said.

This is to help better predict pig production outcomes, Decker said, taking particular focus on health and mortality.

“As my main overarching goal, I want to be able to take the vast amount of data that’s generated in the swine industry and apply some of the more innovative and advanced statistical techniques to help farmers be able to make better decisions with the data they are generating,” Grohmann said.

Decker said he thinks Grohmann’s biggest accomplishments are still ahead of him.

Shull said he hopes Grohmann will find a position within the industry that will benefit from his unique skillset: blending the practical nature of swine production with statistical analysis of big data sets to use in decision making.

“Ultimately, I hope he finds a role within the industry that allows him to leverage that skillset to the maximum,” Shull said.

Someone in my shoes could take many different paths in terms of career options as every business in the world generates data, Grohmann said.

“The sky is the limit,” Decker said. “And whichever breeding company is able to recruit him will have hired a lifelong asset to their company and someone who is really going to be instrumental in helping to move the swine industry forward in terms of profitably and sustainability.”

Photo of the Grohmann Family provided by Caleb Grohmann.

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