From Toy Tractors to Real Risk: How One Iowa Cattleman Built an Empire from the Ground Up
Jordan Morris had $5 in his pocket when he started farming. His equity in 2013 was negative $19,000. He'd just built a pig building that cost $290,000, and he was underwater before he even opened the doors.
"I needed that five bucks to fill up the trencher," Morris says, laughing at the memory. Today, he runs Midwest Feeders LLC, a custom cattle operation in southeast Iowa that feeds 1,200 head under roof across multiple monoslope barns. He's also a licensed risk management agent helping producers navigate the volatile cattle markets with tools like LRP and LGM insurance. And he's a father to five boys who keep him grounded when the weight of building something from scratch threatens to overwhelm.
Morris represents a new breed in agriculture: the first-generation farmer who's carving out success in an industry where most inherit their start. His story begins not in a farmhouse kitchen, but in a town in Muscatine, Iowa, with a collection of die-cast toy tractors that sparked something he couldn't shake.
The Unlikely Beginning
"I actually grew up in town and never really was on a farm as like a real little kid," Morris says. "But there was something about little toy tractors that intrigued me. I don't know why. I don't know if that's what my parents could afford and they bought me toy tractors, so I just started playing with them."
His grandparents owned a hobby shop, and his father flooded him with die-cast farm equipment. When Morris got old enough, spring breaks were spent at his grandparents' 167 acres in Unionville, Missouri, where his grandfather kept seven cows as pets. All had names. All mattered.
"My parents basically drop us off and say, 'Good luck,'" Morris recalls. "And that's, I think, where it started."
A family friend outside Muscatine had 17 acres, a chicken coop, and some bottle calves. Morris spent every free moment there as soon as he could drive. "They say you get bit by the bug and you can't shake it, and I think it just started there."
The real turning point came during his junior year of high school when he moved to Fairfield, Iowa, knowing nobody. It was FFA Tractor Day, and Morris wanted to bring a tractor to school. He approached Pat Hammes, a local farmer who barely knew him.
"I literally talked to Pat, and Pat really didn't know me at the time, and I said, 'Hey, I wanna take one of your tractors to school,'" Morris says. "So he's got this kid from town who he doesn't even know if I've ever driven a tractor."
Hammes hesitated. His sons vouched for Morris. That night, they washed a brand-new 8330 John Deere until it gleamed. "He's like, 'Man, image is everything. If you're gonna take this tractor into town, you gotta wash it, and I'll help you scrub it,'" Morris remembers.
The next morning, Morris showed up in a 1992 Dodge Dakota with rust so bad you could see through the bed. Hammes let him take a $200,000 tractor to town anyway. "Why he trusted me to do it, I don't know. I don't know if I would do that to a random kid today, but he did, and it worked, and that's where it all started."
Jordan Morris, owner of Midwest Feeders
Building from Scratch
Morris worked for Hammes through high school and college, running equipment all night after classes at Iowa State. The experience taught him that agriculture demands more than technical knowledge—it requires the ability to do things you don't want to do when you don't want to do them.
"The biggest thing was learning, hey, I don't wanna get up for class. I don't wanna get this degree. But it's a life lesson. You just have to do it," Morris says. "It's just one of those things that you don't wanna do, but I just had to do it."
After college, Morris struck out on his own with that pig building and a mountain of debt. He learned quickly that first-generation farmers face unique challenges. While generational farmers inherit land, equipment, and established relationships, first-generation operators must build everything from credit to customer networks while learning the business in real time.
By 2019, Morris had stabilized enough to build his first monoslope cattle barn. The timing seemed perfect until his committed customer went bankrupt the day they put the roof on.
"So I'm sitting here with a brand-new barn and no cattle to put in it," Morris says. He convinced a bank to let him buy one pen of cattle at a sale barn. The seller, Jerry Blummy, asked what he planned to do with them. When Morris mentioned his new monoslope, Blummy wanted to see it. "He got two or three guys lined up, and we just started custom feeding."
The snowball effect began. Morris built another barn, bought a third, then built a fourth. Today, Midwest Feeders feeds cattle for producers across Iowa and northern Missouri who previously shipped west and never saw their animals again.
"I've met all of my customers that I currently feed for. They know me direct. If they have an issue, they can call me," Morris says. "They're not calling 10 hired guys to get to me."
That personal touch extends to risk management. Morris became a licensed LRP and LGM agent, helping customers hedge their positions in volatile markets where feeder cattle now cost $2,200-$2,400 per head instead of the $700-$900 of just a few years ago.
"Almost every customer that I custom feed for right now is a customer of mine on the LRP and our hedging side," he says. "So not only am I managing my risk, they're managing their risk and I'm helping them do it."
The work demands sacrifice. Morris balances 18-hour days with being present for his five boys, often returning to the feedlot at 11:30 p.m. to finish paperwork after wrestling practice with his oldest son.
"They're only young once," he says. "And we sit here, and I'm guilty of it—it's sad to even say but it's like I almost wish their childhood away 'cause I want them to be older and be able to help more. And I'm like, 'No, no, no, no, no. Back up. Let them be kids.'"
Morris stays grounded through faith and the advice of his high school mentor: "It's no big deal, man. We're not building a piano." In an industry built on inherited legacy, he's proving that sometimes the most enduring empires are the ones built from nothing but toy tractors and endless determination.
