In November, Jim Peelen was elected governor of Nebraska. At the time, he was financially connected to about 40 companies, including the company he spent three decades expanding into one of the nation's largest hog producers, Pillen Family Farms.
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The governor did not say whether he sold his business holdings. One of the best ways for office holders to avoid conflicts of interest is to sell their assets, but Nebraska law does not require it. A potential conflict of interest is that Pillen now oversees the agency that regulates hog farms that he founded. He has also advocated for policies that will benefit the entire pork industry.
His first trade mission was to Vietnam, an emerging US pork market. As U.S. pork consumption has stagnated, producers have looked for places to sell. Vietnam is a “really very important market for beef and also pork,” Pillen he said Brownfield Ag News after returning from his trade mission. A pork processing company whose board Pillen served on until this year has also sold its product to Vietnam, shipping records show. “That doesn't look good,” said one ethics expert.
In about six years in the 1990s, he built one of the largest pork producers in the country. Pillen started his hog business with his father in the 1980s, but the business took off in the early 1990s. He partnered with other pork producers, which expanded his footprint. In 1992, when he incorporated what would become Pillen Family Farms, he owned a few hog farms. By 1998, it was the second largest hog producer in Nebraska and the 22nd largest in the nation, according to Successful Farming. Pillen Family Farms is now ranked 15th in the United States.
In the 2010s, Pillen consolidated his operations. He bought out his partners and changed the name of his company. One partner had retired but was expecting payments from the share he still had. When he noticed that Pillen's company had not distributed two monthly payments in a row, he contacted Pillen. According to the associate, Pillen initially agreed to provide the payments but later changed his mind. Ultimately, the partner sold her shares, which he said were valued at about $5 million, to Pillen for about $2.3 million.
One of his major investments involved a controversial campaign in South Dakota. At the time he was elected governor, Pillen served on the board of a meatpacking company, Wholestone Farms. (His son, Brock, also sat on the board.) In 2022, Wholestone announced plans to build a plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Concerned about potential pollution from the plant, a group gathered enough signatures to put a moratorium on slaughterhouses in Sioux Falls on the November ballot. Wholestone created its own political action committee to counter the group's messaging, and Brock Pillen donated to the campaign. The day Jim Peelen was elected governor, Sioux Falls residents voted down the proposed ban.
The governor's office and Pillen Family Farms did not respond to specific questions. In a statement, Pillen Family Farms said, “Our business has always been guided by our core principles: 1) Do what's right. 2) Do your best. and 3) Treat others as you want to be treated. Those commitments will never change.”
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