For the sake of the home team, I got what I figured was a Southwest Virginia delicacy and slathered it with mustard to make it edible. But long after the ninth inning — while editing this month's agribusiness feature, in fact — I learned that the Valleydaleium is a Valleydale ad, with swine striking up a billboard band. All sea brand actually is owned by Smithfield Foods Inc. (Nasdaq, SFDS: $29.25). Some of Smithfield's other brands are Esskay, Gwaltney, Dinner Bell, Rath, John Morrell, Patrick Cudahy, Smithfield and Lykes. The company, I should have known, is the big pig of the pork business. The company claims fame as the world's largest hog producer and processor. CEO Joseph W. Luter III appears on our list of top-paid executives and has been a regular on The Virginia 100, our list of the richest people in the commonwealth.

Smithfield stock also is a top dog with investors. This magazine's July Directory of CEO Performance notes that in the past five years, Luter has produced a compound annual return to shareholders of 39.1 percent. The annual return for Smithfield's peers during that time was 18.7 percent, while the S&P 500 was up 23.4 percent per year. If returns were batting averages, Luter would be setting records in the majors.

Investors who put $10,000 in the company when Luter took the helm in 1975 would have $5 million by now, one annual report notes. The stock is still a hit with analysts, and for low-tech reasons. Smithfield is growing through company-owned hog production operations and acquisitions, and it is expanding into international markets. It's also using genetic research to produce lean meat to help the company stand apart from competitors.

From its headquarters in Isle of Wight County, the company operates across the United States and in more than 25 foreign markets — Canada, Poland, France, Japan and Mexico among them. It operates 48 plants that slaughter hogs and process meat, and the company will only get bigger. In May the company acquired Carroll's Foods of Warsaw, N.C. This summer Smithfield also acquired a major stake in Animex, Poland's largest meat and poultry processor. In early September, Smithfield announced plans to buy Rose Hill, N.C.-based Murphy Family Farms, the world's second largest hog producer and processor. Together Smithfield and Murphy control 15 percent of the hogs on U.S. farms.

Murphy Family Farms also specializes in contract farming. Think "contract farming" when you hear tales of citizen groups banding together to keep "hog factories" from expanding next door. Nationally, poorly managed operations and lax enforcement have resulted in environmental nightmares and have made large hog operations a target for criticism. Add that to Smithfield Foods' well-publicized battles with the Environmental Protection Agency — the company is appealing a $12.6 million fine for violating Clean Water Act provisions and polluting the Pagan River. A related suit by the commonwealth is set for trial later this month, but Smithfield doesn't expect either suit to significantly affect operations.

David E. Kenyon, a Virginia Tech professor of agricultural economics, follows the swine industry in Virginia and helped write state regulations on hog operations. In announcing the deal with Murphy's Family Farms, Kenyon notes, Smithfield said that "part of the reason they're doing this is concern about environmental regulations, and how much they would be able to expand in the future." North Carolina has had more lax rules than Virginia and now has a moratorium on new operations, he says.

Regulations are tight in Virginia. Operators have to have what's called a "nutrient management plan," with "nutrients" being the products coming from the south end of a northbound hog. "Every plan is site-specific," Kenyon says. The plan depends on the type of soil on the farm, where the streams are, the slope of the land, what crops are going to be grown there, and whether the land is sufficient to handle the hog waste.

"The other big part of the permit is a ... local government ordinance form," Kenyon explains. Many governments are using their zoning ordinances to try to limit or exclude agricultural operations they don't want. "Some counties have changed their agricultural zoning so that ... waste can't be applied within 300 feet of a property line, 2,000 feet of a subdivision or school or reservoir." They've made it so that hog farmers have to have such large operations that the business becomes unworkable. "If you don't want hogs in your county, you make the zoning extremely strict. Make it impossible for someone to meet the zoning and still make an economically viable product."

Can Smithfield handle such battles? "They're used to it," Kenyon says.