Hometown: Gravette, Ark.
Family: Wife Amanda, son Sayer (6) and daughter Shae (3)
In Town: Levi Price has been with Arvest Bank for 12 years, primarily in the Siloam Springs area. He began his career as a credit analyst before becoming a commercial banker, working with commercial and agricultural clients. In 2019, Levi became the loan manager in the bank’s Siloam Springs area. His role changed again in May 2023 when he was named the new Arvest program’s general manager.
“Arvest decided to start up what we call the Food Value Chain Vertical, also known as the Agriculture Vertical,” Levi explained.
In the Country: Levi and his wife Amanda are part of a generational cattle operation near Gravette, Ark., with Amanda’s parents, Mike and Tricia Leonard.
“My wife is the fifth-generation owner/operator of the Circle L Ranch, which has been in her family since 1884,” Levi said. “We run about 250 head of Angus-based mother cows on roughly 800 acres. We have two segments to our operation; we run a cooperative herd and do embryo transfer work for primarily purebred seed stock companies. About half of the herd is the recips and then all the other cows. Those that don’t stick with the embryos are bull bred.
“At the end of the year, we will have a good chuck of embryo calves that are returned to their owners, and then we will have a good chunk of traditional bull-bred calves from purebred Angus bulls.”
The Circle L Ranch only calves in the spring, starting in the middle of February, and strives for a 60-day calving window. The family retains their best heifers as replacements. Unretained heifer and steer calves are usually weaned in the fall and carried into the following year.
“We want to get them to about 700 or 800 pounds and sell them as a true feeder calf,” Levi explained. “We try to market private treaty as much as possible, but we have a percentage that will be marketed through local sale barns.”
Levi grew up on a small farm in Eastern Oklahoma. He said most of his livestock knowledge revolved around show animals, which changed when he met Amanda at a steer show in Fort Smith, Ark.
“I’ve learned more about the production side since Amanda and I got married,” Levi said, adding that he was involved in 4-H and FFA growing up.
In the Future: “I think it’s preserving the legacy of the farm,” Levi said. “It’s been in Amanda’s family for so long, and now that Amanda and I have two small children, we hope we are setting them up for the future and to take over eventually. That’s our primary goal, but in the interim, you are always looking for ways to be more efficient, market your cattle the best you can, and be as profitable as you can.”
