Lance Westcamp may be one of the few small-town mayors in central Ohio that can be found driving his tractor down Main Street and he is certainly the only one with an office full of champion hog banners from around the country.
?I was born and raised on a farm just south of Groveport. I graduated from Groveport high school in ?75. I farmed 4,500 acres with my dad and brother ? most of it rented ? in mid-70s and my dad always had a commercial sow herd of 50 to 75 sows. Even the farm we lived on was leased from the state. Most of that ground now is warehouses,? Westcamp said. ?We were losing acres to development so my brother and I got outside jobs in late-80s and early 90s. I continued to farm until 2013, but by then most of everything was being custom farmed.?
With the future of the Franklin County farm destined for development as Groveport (and nearby Columbus) continued to grow, Westcamp thought he would give politics a try.
?I got an urge to get into politics and back in ?87 I ran for City Council. There were six people running for six Council seats and I was the top vote getter at
The whole family gets involved in the hog business, including Lance?s granddaughter Sydney Westcamp, who took this piglet to school.
222,? Westcamp said. ?Then in 1994, I was president of the Council and became mayor after the other mayor resigned.?
In addition to his part-time mayoral duties, Westcamp has worked for the Ohio Department of Commerce since 1998. Like the landscape around him, Westcamp has adapted and integrated into urban Ohio, but he has never strayed far from his roots in farming. Westcamp?s unique agricultural background amid a sea of urban sprawl has allowed him some unique opportunities
?I still raise a little bit of sweet corn so I still need a tractor and we?ll bring it to the community once in a while,? he said.
More notable than sweet corn, though, is Westcamp?s work with Landrace hogs.
?I got my first set of Landrace hogs in 1972 and it was a breed I always enjoyed. They make great mothers and they are very content,? he said. ?In 1972, the Franklin County Fair had a herd class with three females and a male. I drove the old pickup to New Knoxville and bought three Landrace gilts and a boar from Vernon Hite. Then I took them to the Franklin County Fair to show and we brought them home and that is how I got my Landrace start. Back when I got
Westcamp has a long line of champions, including the champion Landrace boar at the 2017 Ohio State Fair and the 2017 Indiana State Fair with two different boars.
into them, there were so many. There were more then than there are now. In the 80s there were more Landrace at the State Fair than there are Yorkshires today.?
The American Landrace breed has a white, long body, 16 or 17 pairs of ribs and a less-pronounced arch of back than other breeds. They have a long and narrow head with large, heavy ears and they are noted for meatiness. According to the National Swine Registry, Landrace are often used as grandparents in the production of F1 parent stock females that are utilized in a terminal crossbreeding program for commercial operations. They excel in litter size, birth and weaning weight, rebreeding interval, durability and longevity. They produce F1 females that exhibit 100% maternal heterosis when mated to a Yorkshire.
?Landrace hogs are still out there doing what they are supposed to do for the big commercial guys,? Westcamp said. ?But there are not as many Landrace show pigs as there used to be.?
Westcamp sold all of his pigs around 1985, but got involved again when his children were in 4-H around in the mid-90s.
?My son was probably 16 and we started tinkering around with Landrace when I bought a gilt. Then we started showing at the State Fair around 2002. We got to the point where the State Fair was about to do away with the Landrace show because they didn?t have any numbers,? Westcamp said. ?They need so many in the class or they do away with the breed.?
His proximity to Columbus allowed Westcamp to more easily address the challenge than some others would have been able to do.
?I?m not saying they were all show quality, but we took 12 or so to the State Fair to keep the numbers up. We did that for four or five years and the numbers grew. My kids would take eight of the 12 and we had neighbor kids and we would put the pigs under their names. It was a lot of work, but we lived close by so we were able to do that,? Westcamp said. ?The people at the State Fair appreciated what we were doing because they didn?t want to lose that breed from the show. The kids figured out that there are not that many Landrace hogs and your chances are better with Landrace if you want to take a barrow and they had a better chance to get money and a nice banner for winning.?
Today, along with his son Mitchell who is a teacher and football coach at Groveport, Westcamp has stayed very competitive with his Landrace hogs through Westcamp Family Showpigs.
?We have 14 landrace sows, which is unheard of for show pigs. That is probably the largest herd for Landrace show pigs in the country. We probably sell 25 to 35 club pigs a year,? he said. ?My son and I really started working to better the breed in the late 90s. We had the champion Landrace boar at the Ohio State fair in 2004 and 2007 and we?ve had it the last six years in a row. We had the champion female in 2013. This year I had the champion boar at Ohio State Fair and then took a different boar to Indiana and had the champion boar at the Indiana State Fair.?
The Westcamps have also seen the genetics of their hogs go on to have a broad impact in the industry.
?In 2013 our Ohio State Fair champion boar, Shark Tank, sold to Upper Hand Genetics for $5,000 and has been prolific sire in the industry,? Westcamp said. ?The Grand Champion Boar at the Ohio State Fair 2015 was selected to be display boar at the Hog College in Austin, Minn. at the National Barrow Show and they are on display and first to sell in the sale. He sold for $4,500 to a big commercial herd over there.?
Westcamp was elected in 2010 to serve in the American Landrace Association Board of Directors.
?That was a great honor. We?d meet once a year and go over breed characteristics. They have started a purity test and the quality of the Landrace has really come along. I?d put them up against the other breeds,? Westcamp said. ?The Landrace breed is getting really big in the junior circuit. Louisville will have 60 good Landrace hogs in the Junior Summer Spectacular. The Landrace breed is something I?m proud of. I?m glad to see it where it is today.?
The mayor of charming Groveport has built his livelihood around service to others off the farm, but the highlights of his career have been in the show ring.
?We have done very well over the years showing our Landrace at the Ohio State Fair and the Indiana State Fair and around the country,? Westcamp said. ?One of the best highlights of my career was talking my son into taking five gilts to the Ohio State Fair this year. They were all in the same class and I had five grandkids showing them. The oldest one was eight. They didn?t win, but my wife, who is not a pig person, watched the kids out there all showing at the same time and said, ?Now I know what you are talking about.??
And Westcamp hopes that his urban connections and location can help him share that experience with others.
?I don?t have a college degree but growing up on a farm and being very active in FFA and 4-H, I brought everything I learned there to running meetings as the mayor and running the community. Growing up in a farming community helped me and that is why I keep trying to get kids involved in 4-H. I love to work with kids in town who want a fair project. If a kid in Groveport or even Columbus wants a pig for a project but they don?t have a place to keep them, they can keep it at our place as long as they come out at least once a week to make sure everything is OK and feed and water and wash it. We want to educate the city kids and even rural kids who do not have livestock to be around the animals,? Westcamp said. ?I am concerned with all of the lofts they are building in downtown Columbus and all of the places for the young people to move that those young kids will never see a field of corn or soybeans and won?t know where their food comes from. It all starts with agriculture.?
