05/27/2026
I have been working on this essay for quite some time now. It has nothing to do with raising pork, but it has everything to do with how we raise young farmers and ultimately young adults. This has weighed heavily on my heart for the better part of six months now, and I finally decided it was important enough to put into words. I genuinely welcome thoughtful feedback because I do not want this to read as anger. I want it to read as sadness. More importantly, I want people to step outside of their own personal experiences and emotions long enough to honestly examine the impact adults can have on children when competition, pride, money, and social influence begin outweighing integrity.
‘What We Are Really Teaching’
There was a time when livestock shows felt smaller. Not necessarily smaller in attendance, money, or influence, but smaller in spirit. Smaller in the way old churches feel smaller. Smaller in the way local baseball fields or county fairs feel smaller. People still disagreed, argued, competed, and occasionally got downright mad at each other, but there remained a shared understanding that the experience was supposed to help build young people into capable adults. The animals mattered, the banners mattered, the competition mattered, but those things were never meant to outrank the character being formed in the process.
That distinction feels increasingly blurred.
The forgotten beauty of this industry was never that every kid started from the same place. They never did, and they never will. Agriculture has always reflected real life. Some families had land. Some had money. Some had connections, better barns, better trailers, better genetics, better timing, or simply better luck. That was understood. What made the industry beautiful was not equality of resources, but the belief that integrity, discipline, intelligence, and relentless effort could still carve a path forward for a kid willing to chase it hard enough.
One child might pull into the show with the best pigs money could buy straight off the top breeder’s farm. Another might spend an entire summer sweating through odd jobs just to afford one good pig at auction. Another might become obsessed with the craft itself, spending years studying pedigrees, asking questions, making mistakes, listening to older breeders, learning genetics, learning structure, learning how to feed, learning how to fail, and eventually taking the gamble of trying to breed one good enough to compete against operations with vastly more resources. Those paths were never financially equal, but they were all honorable because they were rooted in effort, sacrifice, curiosity, and personal investment.
That was the promise. That somewhere inside all the noise and economics of the livestock world, there still existed room for a kid with grit, honesty, and passion to matter.
And for a long time, that promise was enough.
The problem is not success. The problem is not wealth. The problem is not even the existence of highly competitive livestock operations. Free markets reward excellence, innovation, presentation, consistency, and investment. They always have. There is nothing inherently wrong with a family having the resources to buy elite genetics, travel nationally, hire consultants, or compete aggressively at the highest level. Some of the best families in this industry have substantial resources and still raise extraordinary children with humility, work ethic, gratitude, and integrity.
Wealth is not the issue.
Entitlement is.
The danger begins when adults start teaching children that image matters more than honesty, influence matters more than correctness, and winning matters more than integrity. It begins when unethical behavior is reframed as strategy, when social pressure replaces accountability, and when adults become so financially, socially, or emotionally invested in success that they stop asking whether something is right and begin asking only whether it works.
Psychologists have studied this exact phenomenon for decades. Albert Bandura described it as moral disengagement, a process in which people gradually disconnect their actions from their ethical standards once those actions become socially normalized and rewarded within a group. In simple terms, people can learn to justify almost anything if enough surrounding voices reward the outcome. Over time, behavior that would have once felt dishonest becomes reframed as clever, necessary, competitive, or simply “how the industry works.”
That process becomes especially dangerous around children because children do not primarily learn ethics from speeches. They learn ethics through observation. They watch which adults are admired. They watch which behaviors are rewarded. They watch who gets protected, who gets mocked, who gets excluded, and who gets celebrated. Long before they can explain morality philosophically, they absorb it socially.
If children repeatedly witness adults rewarding manipulation, dishonesty, intimidation, false representation, and social pile ons while simultaneously mocking integrity as weakness, they begin to internalize a devastating lesson: honest paths are for suckers.
That is what disturbs me.
Not losing.
Not banners.
Not competition.
I can handle criticism personally. Mock me all day long if it makes somebody feel powerful. Adults mocking adults online with the emotional maturity of middle school cliques says far more about the culture producing the behavior than it does about the person being targeted. What is sad is not disagreement itself. Intelligent disagreement can sharpen people. Thoughtful criticism can improve industries. Agriculture has always needed difficult conversations. What is disappointing is how often adults choose cruelty, ridicule, and intimidation over honest discussion because mockery requires far less character than reflection.
And perhaps the ugliest part of all is watching adults use children as shields for behavior the adults themselves created.
Once that line is crossed, the child slowly stops being a student and starts becoming an extension of adult ambition. The show ring becomes less about learning responsibility, discipline, patience, sportsmanship, and humility, and more about social branding, influence, and business positioning. Agriculture begins drifting toward pageantry. The backdrop photo becomes more important than the principles supposedly being taught beneath it.
That is not mentorship.
That is exploitation wearing a livestock jacket.
The irony is that the greatest lessons this industry has ever offered had very little to do with winning. Ask successful adults what they carried with them from FFA, 4-H, or livestock exhibition and most do not immediately start talking about banners. They talk about waking up before daylight to feed animals before school. They talk about learning how to speak publicly even when terrified. They talk about record books teaching responsibility. They talk about losing with grace, failing publicly, working when nobody was watching, and understanding that eventually their reputation became worth more than any ribbon they could ever hang on a wall.
That was the real value.
Character.
I love this industry because I love the pursuit of unobtainable perfection. I love the old breeders who can evaluate one from across the barn in seconds. I love the kid who studies pedigrees harder than his classmates study for exams. I love watching a hardworking child finally get a good one after years of sacrifice. I enjoy helping first year kids get started without the burden of buying the animal outright. I enjoy zero dollar leases to families who cannot afford elite genetics yet. I enjoy seeing the kid who sold boiled peanuts, cut grass, hauled hay, washed trucks, worked internships, strung bracelets, or exhausted themselves for months finally become competitive. I enjoy seeing pigs my son bred step out of quarter million dollar rigs just as much as old rusted horse trailers because the trailer itself has never been the point.
The child is the point.
The values are the point.
The integrity is the point.
And yes, I believe breed integrity matters too. If organizations want young people to believe breed standards matter, then those standards must mean something beyond convenience and color pattern. Personally, I believe organizations such as CPS and NSR should move toward meaningful genetic verification standards for breed registration and breeding eligibility. Not because perfection is possible overnight, but because preserving integrity matters. Lock the standards where they are now if necessary. Set a realistic purity threshold. Make breeding classes about the actual breeds again. Open opportunity back up to hardworking and ethical families instead of quietly rewarding whoever is most comfortable operating inside moral gray areas.
No system will ever remove dishonesty entirely. Human beings are imperfect, and competition will always tempt people to compromise. But adults still carry the responsibility to decide what behaviors deserve normalization in front of children.
That responsibility matters, because eventually the pigs are gone. The banners fade. The trailers get sold. The jackets end up hanging silently in closets. But the values adults normalized in front of children! remain long after the show ring is empty. They show up in marriages, business dealings and community.
