A Year in the Life of a Farmer: Swine facility complements farming operation

AgriNews will follow Chad Bell throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the farmer and the decisions he makes on his farm.

VIOLA, Ill. — Raising livestock is an important way for Chad Bell to diversify his farming operation in western Illinois.

“My family has farmed in this area for three generations since the early 1960s, and overall I am a sixth-generation farmer,” he said.

Bell and his wife, Brittany, have two children, Amelia, 12, and Charlie, 9.

“I grew up with cattle and hogs, and then the late ‘90s pushed us out of the hogs,” Bell said.

He majored in ag business and agronomy at Illinois State University.

“My interest in livestock waned when I went to college,” said the farmer who returned to the family operation full time in 2013.

“From the end of 2013 to 2016 was a downtime in agriculture, grain prices specifically, and the Biddle farm family was looking to expand their farrow-to-finish operation,” he said.

“They had some contract producers in the area and they were looking for more, so that is what led me down the path to diversify the farm and get back into livestock.”

Bell built a 2,400-head wean-to-finish barn at the end of 2017.

“My dad got out of the cattle business and I thought there was a piece that would be missing if we were just primarily a row-crop farm because my family always had livestock,” he said.

“We did fairly well navigating through the ‘80s because of the livestock and being a crop-only operation didn’t sit well with me.”

Now, Bell is the primary operator and manager of Bell Family Farms in Mercer County.

“My dad, Greg, is out of the day-to-day management, but he helps with running the planter in the spring and with harvest in the fall,” he said.

The operation includes a little over 1,800 acres that is primarily 50-50 corn and soybeans, with a little bit of wheat.

“I dabble with wheat as a third crop and typically we try to apply some hog manure after the wheat is harvested and the straw is baled,” the farmer said.

In addition, this gives Bell the opportunity to try some different cover crop species.

“I have messed with cover crops since 2012 and for me better water infiltration and erosion control are the biggest two pluses for cover crops,” Bell said.

“Even on gradual slopes, the water has to go somewhere and I’d rather keep in on the land to raise a crop, versus seeing it run off because it is taking nutrients with it, too,” he said.

Bell’s swine barn features two rooms and each pen on average has 30 pigs. The pigs arrive at his farm weighing from 12 to 15 pounds, and he raises them to market weight, which typically is about five and a half months.

“Then we move the pigs out, wash the barn and get ready for the next ones, so it is just a shade over two turns of pigs per year,” he said.

Typically, there are two deliveries of pigs, with each delivery filling one room of the barn.

“The Biddles have a local farm and various other sow farms outside of the area, so the pigs I have been getting are coming from the boot heel of Missouri,” Bell said.

When the pigs arrive, the barn temperature is set at 80 degrees.

“The temperature is gradually declined, and by the time the pigs have been here 100 days, it is at 63 degrees,” Bell said.

“This controller is basically the brains of the barn — it runs the ventilation, heat and feed,” he said. “I set the feed schedule and it controls the feed to make sure the pigs always have feed.”

For the temperature, the controller adjusts the speed of the fans based on the target temperature.

“As the pigs get bigger and they have more body heat, eventually more fans start running to exhaust the heat that the pigs are creating, plus the reduction in the temperature requirement,” Bell said. “By the time the pigs get close to market weight, you might see the curtains down because of so much heat.”

An upgrade that Bell added since he built the swine barn is the BarnTalk app on his cellphone. The mobile alarm system monitors the feed bin levels, temperature and water consumption for each room.

“I can view it on my phone anytime, anywhere, and it will notify me if there has not been any water consumption in the east room for three hours,” Bell said. “Or, if the temperature has dropped, then I know something has happened and I can come here and see what needs to be fixed.”

Bell is a member of the Mercer County Farm Bureau and served on the board for eight years, as well as the county president for two years. He has also been a member of the Gold Star FS Co-op board since 2017.

For 2026, Bell is the pork ambassador for Illinois Farm Families, where he will be providing pictures and videos of his farming operation through social media.

“I am just getting started with this and the first project is for National Ag Day,” he said.

Bell will submit different clips from the farm and talk about the importance of agriculture.

“I will be showing what farms look like and what we are involved with,” he said.

Sharing his farming activities through social media is nothing new for Bell, who started with Facebook in 2004, posting pictures and videos from around the farm to show what he does and provide his opinion on current topics and farming practices.

“I like sharing what goes on at the farm — it is a sense of pride,” said Bell, who can also be found on TikTok. “As generations are further removed from the farm, they don’t know what is going on day-to-day at a farm.”

Using social media, Bell said, gives him the opportunity to answer questions or respond to criticisms.

“When people see something that they don’t know what we are doing, the natural instinct is to think negatively about it,” the pork producer said.

“They see a barn that is all closed up and they might think the farmer has something to hide,” he said. “But we have moved pigs from an outdoor environment to a more controlled environment and the walls are to keep the heat in and the pigs healthy.”

As farmers learn new information and new technology becomes available, Bell said, they make changes to their operations, whether it is for pig comfort, production efficiency or financial benefit.

“Years ago, our farms were pretty much confined to where we live, so you stepped out your back door and there was your livestock,” Bell said.

“Now the footprints of our farming operation have expanded and our production methods have allowed for a barn to be set five miles away from our home farm,” he said. “We are producing livestock in the same way — it just looks different.”