By the time he was 10 years old, Taylor Smith was already recognized by his community as a promising young farmer. He’d started to build his cow herd. He was handy with equipment. His work ethic was unmatched by anyone else at his elementary school. But Taylor wasn’t interested in the recognition. He just wanted to be on the farm.

“He’s probably one of the most successful farmers I know,” says Kyle Rupp of his dad, Gary. “He started from the ground up and made all of this possible.”

Plant workers walked out of a JBS packing facility in Greeley, Colorado, on Monday, March 16, putting a major dent in beef production at a time of high demand and high prices.

Dairyman Greg Nye knew his dairy was handling its feedstuffs too much. He didn’t like what that was costing his dairy in shrink. Given that his farm also feeds pricier non-GMO ingredients as part of its milk shipping agreement, he started looking at alternatives to how he was handling feed ingredients to save money.