Lewis Taylor Farms grows an average of 85 million pine seedlings.

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part look into agribusiness in our region. For part two, please see the Wednesday, Aug. 8 edition of The Tifton Gazette

TIFTON — Agribusiness contributes $73 billion to Georgia’s $972 billion economy each year, according to the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, with 383,600 Georgians working in agriculture, forestry or a related field.

Agribusiness is more than farming a row crop such as peanuts or tobacco.

It encompasses everything from growing crops, such as cotton, watermelon, peaches and cucumbers, to raising animals such as chickens, cattle, horses and hogs, to growing pines for timber and pecan trees for pecans.

In the SunLight Project coverage area – Valdosta, Moultrie, Thomasville, Dalton, Milledgville and Tifton, Ga., and Live Oak, Fla. – agriculture plays a large role in local communities.

Top Commodities

According to the UGA CAED, the top 10 commoities Georgia agriculture produces are broilers (9- to 12-week-old chickens), cotton, eggs, timber, peanuts, beef, greenhouse plants, dairy, pecans and blueberries.

In 2016, Georgia was ranked first in the United States as a producer of broilers, peanuts, eggs, pecans and onions, second in the country in cotton production and third in the country in watermelon and blueberry production, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

At roughly 9 percent of economic output, farming is the largest sector in Georgia by far.

Although the percentage of Americans working on farms is minuscule compared to 100 years ago, production has increased dramatically during that period. For many small towns, the revenue generated by farmers is spent on trucks, tractors, clothes and thousands of other goods and services, making it vital to those communities.

Sydni Barwick, Thomas County agriculture and natural resources extension service agent, explained the diversity of areas beyond the farm affected by agribusiness.

“Agriculture plays a huge role in our community and employs farm managers and operators,” she said, “as well as crop insurance agents, truck drivers, welders, accountants, mechanics, educators, well drillers, cotton gin employees, peanut buying point employees, vegetable packing shed employees, irrigation dealers, electricians, bankers, brokers, fuel company employees, fertilizer and other input dealers, veterinarians, agricultural aviators, UGA employees, and USDA employees. Our community would look vastly different without the influence of agriculture.”

According to the USDA’s 2012 Census of Agriculture, Lafayette County, Fla., located in the agricultural-dominant North Florida area, ranked third in the state when it came to milk produced.

And while Lafayette County was big in dairies as well as pigs and hogs — also ranked third in the state in 2012 — Suwannee County is the top poultry producing county in Florida. Nearly 7 million broilers and other meat-type chickens came from the county six years ago. Lafayette was third with just more than 1 million with Hamilton County, Fla., fourth in poultry production.

Impact on communities

Agribusiness has an enormous effect on local communities, both by its presence and absence, according to state officials and farmers.

In areas where agriculture is still a strong economic driver, the impact on the community is strongly felt.

Colquitt County led the state in farm gate value in 2016 at almost $550 million, Colquitt is tops in cabbage and zucchinis and also the number one county in the state in vegetable revenue. It is second in bell peppers, cantaloupes, eggplants, greens and squash, and third in cucumbers and sweet corn.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of farming to the economies of small towns. Merchants in Moultrie can tell when it’s been a bad farm year due to drought or low prices for commodities.

In Tift County, the total economic contribution of ag-, food- and fiber-related industries to the local economy is more than $384 million.

Justin Hand, Tift County agriculture and natural resources extension agent, said that the largest commodity in Tift is vegetables.

“About 60 percent of what we produce in Tift County is going to be vegetables,” he said. “Everything from okra to 10 or 12 different kinds of peppers, squash, zucchini, cantaloupes, greens. We have a lot of those. We’re number one in cantaloupe production in the state, we’re number one in greens production. I think we’re second or third in watermelon production. Cotton and peanuts, and a little bit of tobacco and soybeans. We don’t have any poultry. There’s an ordinance, I think, that doesn’t allow you to have chicken houses, largely due to the smell.”

Hand said the farm gate value of crops coming off farms is $176 million for Tift County.

Farm gate value is the market value of the product multiplied by the weight minus the selling costs, such as transport costs and marketing costs.

Adding the ag contribution, which is how it directly or indirectly affects an industry, the total is $462 million, Hand said.

“Once you account for the direct and indirect industries, ag is going to account for 13 percent of the employment in Tift County,” Hand said. “It’s 15 percent of the total economy. That’s the farmer, the people selling ag inputs, the feed store, the people the feed store buys from, the truckers that haul stuff, everything directly or indirectly that is affected by ag in Tift County.”

Jessica Brim Kirk, director of food safety and marketing for Lewis Taylor Farms in Tift County, said the farm is the second or third largest employer in Tift County.

“We’re one of the largest produce and agricultural business owners in the Southeast,” she said. “We have about 715 employees. We’re busy year-round and we stay busy.”

Lewis Taylor Farms, which was established approximately 60 years ago, produces 7,000 acres of produce such as squash, eggplant, cucumber, bell peppers, specialty peppers, strawberries, a variety of greens, broccoli and melons. It utilizes greenhouses to grow transplants they then ship to other farms and institutions, and an average of 85 million pine tree seedlings, which are shipped out and used for timber and reforestation.

“We have our own packing facilities,” Kirk said. “We have our own shipping docks, all our own sales team. We do everything here at the farm.”

Thomas County farmer and long-time Commissioner Ken Hickey said agriculture is as important as it has always been, but awareness of its importance is diminishing.

In Thomas County and most surrounding counties, agriculture is the No. 1 revenue source, Hickey said.

“And that’s the way it’s always been,” he said.

If agriculture has a good year, people spend money, and it is a good year countywide, he said.

In production, Thomas County has the widest planting range the community has had in a while.

Thomas Extension Agent Barwick said nearly one-third of the cotton crop has been planted much later than usual this year – after the second week of June. Planting after this date reduces the crop’s yield potential.

“Early season dry weather with frequent rains to follow have impacted our cotton crops root system, making it very shallow,” she said. “Well-timed rains will be important for the rest of the season to keep our dryland crop from getting excessively drought stressed. Other factors, like the weather, insect and disease pressure, will also influence the remainder of the season.”

The importance of agriculture is growing exponentially, Barwick said.

The United Nations predicts the world population will reach 9.7 billion people in 2050 — “and we will need to feed, clothe and house all of these people,” Barwick said. To make it possible, agricultural technology must continue to improve, she said.

While Baldwin County no longer sustains the large-scale agriculture of the past, its unusual mix of Georgia Red Clay and drier, sandier soil still supports some crops.

The county had 124 registered farms as of its most recent count in 2012, according to the 2017 edition of the Georgia County Guide from the University of Georgia statewide extension office, which provides access to statewide programs and information to Baldwin County farmers.

While the report lists the biggest crop in Baldwin as hay, the county has several tree and poultry farms near its southern border, and a few small, organic farms have taken root in recent years. While employers such as Georgia College, Central Georgia Tech and the ever-growing row of shops and restaurants along 441 provide diverse employment for county residents, Baldwin County Commissioner Sammy Hall said he would like to see farming have a greater impact in coming years.

In the decades after World War ll, Baldwin County residents relied on agriculture as one of the major drivers of its economy. Part of the fertile swath of farmland stretching from coastal Georgia north and west, Baldwin County was a major producer of dairy, poultry and other crops for many years. Although agriculture was once a major part of the Baldwin County economy, changes in the county’s employment pool have pushed younger workers into other industries in recent decades.

“Agriculture in Baldwin County is not what it once was,” Hall said. “Going back when I was young, farming was pretty large – there were a large number of dairy farms, row crop farming, poultry farms. Now, the biggest thing we have in farming is forestry. Agriculture in terms of row crops, dairy and things like that does not have the effect on the county that it once did.”

Mostly gone are the small family farms that dotted the North Florida landscape a generation ago. Instead, huge commercial farms now dominate.

Growing effects

At one time in the nation’s history, farmers made up about 90 percent of the U.S. population; now it is less than 2 percent. After World War II, the population began to shift.

This trend holds true in Georgia and North Florida, due to a variety of issues ranging from the expense of getting started and keeping up with changes in technology, to the stress of operating a farm and difficulty with regulations.

“The farms had to get larger due to scale of economy,” said Cliff Starling, a Suwannee County farmer and Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences employee, explaining the price of corn, for example, was about the same 50 years ago as it is now while the price of production has continued to rise.

Part of the trend to larger farms can be directed to the decline of tobacco.

“As tobacco phased out after the buyout, some of the farmers who grew tobacco, they had to get a little bit bigger and expand in order to sustain themselves economically because tobacco was such a cash crop,” said De Broughton, commercial crops agent at the UF/IFAS Suwannee County Extension office. “Now they’re either having to get bigger or get out and find another job.”

Starling added: “Almost everybody had a patch of tobacco. Every farm had a tobacco allotment or rented a tobacco allotment. So all the other stuff they had on the farm supported the tobacco in order to make that farm’s living.”

Instead, some farms grew in size. Other farmers, such as Starling, farm part-time while also working another job.

That job subsidizes the farm.

As he travels across North Florida helping other farmers implement best management practices mandated by state legislation, he understands their needs and concerns because he’s also a farmer.

“He has to enroll in BMPs and he’s asking farmers to enroll in BMPs,” Broughton said. “He has to go through the same process.”

Starling said there are times he’ll even use his farm as a testing ground for certain things before he’ll pass them along to other producers.

It also allows him to see how some suggested BMPs may not work for all farms and all operations. While technology in agriculture is constantly expanding, some of that, such as soil moisture probes, aren’t sensible for Starling and his 40-acre farm. It also wouldn’t be beneficial to some commercial farms that aren’t irrigated.

“There comes a point that you can’t really afford some of the technology,” he said, adding, “we’re doing [some] of the stuff that was done by our great-great-grandfathers out on our place.”

Jason Ridley has been a farmer only about six years, but he says he’s been around farming his entire life. After spending 13 years working as a lending officer at banks and farm credit unions, helping farmers grow their businesses, he started 4 Oaks Farm and Produce, which grows organic vegetables and free-range chickens and chicken eggs, in northern Murray County.

“Everything has gotten so automated now, like every other industry. It just doesn’t take as many people,” he said.

But the cost of capital has also squeezed smaller operations, he said.

“When my grandparents were farming, you could put up a couple of chicken houses and bring in some extra income,” he said. “Now, you’ve got to have at least four or six or more houses to make money because the input costs are so high. The houses alone can cost $250,000 to $350,000 to build. If you build six of those, your investment can be $2 million, and that’s if you already own the property. When I was in banking, I saw operations where the people they hired were making more money than the owner-operator.”

He said that’s why more farmers have begun to diversify.

Ridley said the tremendous increase in U.S. natural gas production, and the fall in prices, has been a big boon to farmers, especially to poultry farmers. Locally, many farmers have switched to natural gas from propane to heat chicken houses in the winter.

“That (switching to natural gas) has taken some houses that were breaking even or maybe even losing money and made them profitable,” he said.

Tift Extension Agent Hand said the industry is trying to produce more with less.

“We’re running out of farm land,” he said. “Farmers are aging. It’s not easy for new people to get into farming, it’s a process.”

The SunLight Project team of journalists who contributed to this report includes Thomas Lynn, Derrek Vaughn, Jason Smith, Kevin Hall, Patti Dozier, Will Woolever, Eve Copeland and Jessie Box.