Meet the top 10 Southeastern farmers of 2019

<p>They started Richardson Greenhouse in 1974 with a quarter of an acre and some geranium and other cuttings from their grandmother’s yard. Hank Richardson remembers, “We built a 28 X 96 foot greenhouse and started learning how to grow and sell plants and delivered them on a pickup truck with a camper shell on top. We got a lot of support from our friends and neighbors in the community and just learned as we went along.”</p>

<p>Building incremental success over those first few years, they merged in 1979 with another local greenhouse, Foliage Farms. That’s when Dixie Green came into being. Richardson says, “That first year we had about three acres of greenhouse and two delivery trucks but continued to expand our facilities and markets.”</p>

<p>Today Hank Richardson and his two sons, John and Daniel, have 35 local employees and add more during the busy seasons. John is head grower; Daniel is in charge of irrigation and trucking and shipping; Dad Hank runs the office and keeps up with invoicing. Altogether they have twelve acres of heated greenhouse space and around eight acres of outdoor pad growing space. Yields are as follows: 250,000 poinsettia plants yielding $56,440 per acre; 250,000 fall mums yielding $50,363 per acre; 325,0000 caladiums yielding $116,667 per acre; 40,000 calla lilies yielding $152,925 per acre; 15,000 ferns yielding $35,590 per acre; and 735,000 assorted flowers and plants yielding $196,206 per acre.</p>

<p>Dixie Green grows annuals for national store chains and produces up to half a million spring plants per year. <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/hank-richardson-named-2019-alabama-farmer-of-the... more.</a></p>

<p>Curiosity, innovation, and sustainability are the hallmarks underlying the success of Isbell Farms, a six-generation family enterprise with 3000 acres of rice production in Humnoke, Arkansas. Chris Isbell, Judy Isbell, Mark Isbell, Shane Isbell, and Jeremy Jones form the company’s partnership that has three other full-time employees. They do business as Zero Grade Farms.</p>

<p>In the early twentieth century, a couple of generations of Isbell’s grew cotton and harvested timber for railroad crossties. When Chris’s dad, Leroy Isbell, returned to Lonoke County from his WWII Navy service, he used his GI bill income to pay for his first crop of rice. Intent on increasing yield and efficiency, he water seeded his rice crops and pioneered zero-grading of rice fields, allowing his fields to drain water more quickly in four directions rather than the sloped direction found in traditional rice levee systems. The result was a 30 percent reduction of water usage.</p>

<p>This conservation method is now applied on 100 percent of Isbell Farms acreage that produces its special varieties of Japanese and sake rice, as well as its staple long grain rice. <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/chris-isbell-named-2019-arkansas-farmer-of-the-y... more.</a></p>

<p>Graduating from the University of Florida’s IFAS program (Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences) in 1979 with a major in vegetable crop production and a minor in tropical agriculture, Chuck Obern began his career by working for a few farmers in southwest Florida to learn the commercial produce industry. He applied his academic studies and previous hands-on experiments to help grow their businesses. In 1986, he was offered a land share of ten acres just outside Immokalee, and that was the beginning of an enterprise that would progressively expand in acreage and diversity over the years.</p>

<p>C&amp;B Farms, Inc. grows, both conventionally and organically, thirty different vegetables and herbs on its 1500 acres. Their staple is specialty produce: organic green beans, eggplant, baby bok choy, green cabbage, and an assortment of peppers, greens, radishes, and herbs such as basil, cilantro and other culinary varieties. Yields are as follows: 300 acres of cilantro yielding 1000 cases per acre; 200 acres of bunch radish yielding 1200 cases per acre; 200 acres of organic green beans yielding 150 cases per acre; 150 acres of green cabbage yielding 1000 cases per acre; 100 acres of basil yielding 6450 lbs. per acre; 90 acres of culinary herbs yielding 7500 lbs. per acre; 60 acres of Napa yielding 650 cases per acre; and 60 acres of bok choy yielding 700 cases per acre. <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/charles-w-obern-named-2019-florida-farmer-of-the... more.</a></p>

<p>Robert Lee Dickey II (“Mr. Bob”), Robert Lee Dickey III (“Robert”), and Robert L. Dickey IV (“Lee”) combine their skills to carry on the farming legacy of growing the tastiest peaches in the south. Calling on deep family experience, they are planting year-round, inspecting every detail. This multi-generational experience makes them some of the most knowledgeable and skilled growers in the industry. And they love what they do.</p>

<p>All during his growing up years, Robert worked on the farm part-time. After graduating from high school, his father urged him to pursue a business degree, saying that he could always teach him more about the land, but that mastering the economics of agriculture would be of key importance to the future. So Robert earned his degree in 1977 in Finance from the University of Georgia, thinking perhaps he might enter the banking industry. Fortunately, for the long-term prospects of Dickey Farms, those jobs were scarce, and Dickey returned home, armed with educational tools that would prove to be innovative and expansive. <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/robert-l-dickey-iii-named-2019-georgia-farmer-of... more.</a></p>

<p>Danny Cunningham grew up on a sixty-acre dairy farm in Calloway County, Kentucky. At thirteen he learned to drive an old pickup truck to school on back roads because his dad figured that by letting him drive, he could get home at least an hour earlier than if he took the bus. And that hour could be spent on farm chores.</p>

<p>Tasked with a lot of the milking, Cunningham wasn’t thrilled about that part of agricultural life. He recalls, “I loved working the land, so I started renting ground for row cropping and growing tobacco. I bought my first farm in 1964 and built our family farm house in 1967. My wife, Judy, was my number-one hand on the farm. She could do anything I could do—drive tractors, combines, and grain trucks—while doing a wonderful job of raising our three daughters.” <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/danny-cunningham-named-2019-kentucky-farmer-of-t... more.</a></p>

<p>Forty years ago Ted Parker borrowed $5,000 to rent forty acres in Oloh, Mississippi. He now spends his days operating six farms in six different locations in six counties in the piney country of south Mississippi.</p>

<p>He recalls, “In those early times I continued to borrow money to purchase more cattle. My wife worked full time and I also worked two jobs. We put everything into the business to make it grow. It was something I was passionate about, and I felt blessed to find this lifelong calling as a young man. Fortunately, I was also able to eventually find a lender who understood cattle financing and this type of agriculture.”</p>

<p>Recognized as the Covington County Cattleman of the Year in 2015 and the National Beef Stock Award Winner of the Year in 2018, Parker finds fulfillment in getting his animals healthy and producing the highest quality beef he possibly can for consumers. <a href="http://Forty years ago Ted Parker borrowed $5,000 to rent forty acres in Oloh, Mississippi. He now spends his days operating six farms in six different locations in six counties in the piney country of south Mississippi. He recalls, “In those early times I continued to borrow money to purchase more cattle. My wife worked full time and I also worked two jobs. We put everything into the business to make it grow. It was something I was passionate about, and I felt blessed to find this lifelong calling as a young man. Fortunately, I was also able to eventually find a lender who understood cattle financing and this type of agriculture.” Recognized as the Covington County Cattleman of the Year in 2015 and the National Beef Stock Award Winner of the Year in 2018, Parker finds fulfillment in getting his animals healthy and producing the highest quality beef he possibly can for consumers.">Read more.</a></p>

<p>Johnny Wishon didn’t grow up on a farm, but his father, a game warden, did. Wishon remembers, “We had a little over five acres of land, and my dad always had the biggest garden in the county. He would let me grow extra vegetables to sell to the local grocery store.” In high school he became involved in Vo-Ag, FFA, and agriculture classes, all of which steered him toward a farming career.</p>

<p>Majoring in agricultural education at North Carolina State University, Wishon spent summer breaks working on a local farmer’s Christmas tree farm and developed a passion for growing trees. After graduating in 1988, he started Wishon Evergreens, planting a few hundred trees on family land. It took ten years of working two jobs—as a tree farmer and as an agricultural science teacher at Alleghany High School—for Wishon to be able to farm full time.</p>

<p>Today he has three successful companies: Wishon Evergreens, wholesale Christmas tree and greenery products, Appalachian Produce Company, pumpkins and fall products, and the Christmas Tree Company, online Christmas tree and greenery sales. <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/johnny-wishon-named-2019-north-carolina-farmer-o... more.</a></p>

<p>Sidi Limehouse (pronounced “sigh dye”) is a man with deep Lowcountry roots. His early mercantile ancestors settled in Charleston in the 1700s and spread out from there. When he came into the world on Johns Island in December of 1938, his father celebrated by purchasing Mullet Hall Plantation on Johns Island across from Kiawah Island. It was a child’s paradise, growing up in that fairly remote environment that even lacked electricity early on. An environment far from today’s nearby mix of luxury homes, golf resorts, and elegant vacation destinations in Seabrook and Kiawah.</p>

<p>Limehouse studied Agricultural Engineering at Clemson University and graduated in 1960. He started his career growing corn and soybeans on the family farm but eventually transitioned from row crops to truck farming. From 1967–68 and 1971–72 he served in the South Carolina state legislature but found that politics took too much time away from farming. “I soon realized,” he says, “that one could not be both a good legislator and a good farmer. I believe I chose the nobler profession.” <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/sidi-limehouse-named-2019-south-carolina-farmer-... more.</a></p>

<p>In his forty-five-year career as a diversified farmer, Jerry Ray has never worked for anyone but himself. This means that when things go well—in the ordinary course of fat years and lean—he earns the rewards. And when they don’t, he accepts the full weight of responsibility. It’s an old-fashioned ethic that defines his approach to life in general.</p>

<p>Jerry Ray’s success has earned him the honor of being selected as the Swisher Sweets/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year for Tennessee in 2019. He also garnered that title in 2008.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Ray’s farm operation in and around Tullahoma, Tennessee encompasses 1900 total acres with 1,780 acres rented and 120 acres owned. His business is 50 percent cattle (stocker calves) and 50 percent crops. <a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/jerry-ray-named-2019-tennessee-farmer-of-the-yea... more</a>.</p>

<p>Nestled in the rolling hills and timberland of the southern Piedmont area of Virginia, Locust Level Farm is in a part of the state where, historically, fields of two to fifteen acres produced tobacco, supplemented by row crops. Michael McDowell is the fourth generation to practice stewardship on this land—designated a Virginia “century” farm—but he has taken some decidedly different directions from those of the past.</p>

<p>At the age of sixteen, McDowell says that his father offered him three acres of flue-cured tobacco under a sharecropper arrangement to produce funds for future college expenses. “I can’t say how important it was to take that step. It taught me early on the value of responsibility and about the challenges and rewards of working the land to provide for my needs.” He went on the graduate from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg with a double major in animal science and agronomy.<a href="https://sunbeltexpo.com/michael-h-mcdowell-named-2019-virginia-farmer-of... more.</a></p>