Agriculture 2025: HOUFF, NEIL A.

Starting as a liquid fertilizer business on a Shenandoah family farm in 1975, Houff Corp. grew to provide a range of agricultural and industrial services, including agronomy, supply chain solutions, transloading and biosolids management.

Houff, who earned an agriculture education degree from Virginia Tech, has been the corporation’s president since the early 1990s. In recent years, Houff Corp. has expanded its crop storage space at its Weyers Cave facility. The 90-employee company is building out a 16-acre rail transload facility in Doswell, its fifth Virginia location and third transload facility.

Houff Corp. and its sister company, IDM Trucking, make up Railside Enterprises. In 1999, the companies began distributing stock to employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan and today the company is 48% employee-owned.

Houff is a member of the Virginia Crop Production Association board. Last year, he joined the board of F&M Bank Corp., the parent company of Farmers & Merchants Bank, which has banking offices in Rockingham, Shenandoah and Augusta counties and in the cities of Winchester and Waynesboro.

FIRST JOB: Feeding baby calves on our dairy farm

PERSONAL MOTTO: Why can’t we do it?

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