Fourth-generation Arkansas farmer Dalton Dilldine always dreamed of farming and following in his father’s footsteps.
“I knew I wanted to farm and really couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” he says.
But Dilldine’s dad unexpectedly passed away when he was a senior in high school with a limited succession plan in place — leaving him with the choice to take over the operation, start his own farm or go to college.
He chose all three.
“I would go to school and come home every weekend. After I graduated, I started taking over the whole operation and really tried to do things that my father would be proud of - and that I could be proud for myself. I just tried to do my best every day.”
Expanding With Innovation
Located in the Delta of Arkansas, he co-managed Half Moon Farm with his mother until 2010 when he went on his own, creating Mezza Luna Farms. Now, Dilldine grows 6,000 acres of cotton, soybeans, wheat, corn and rice. Of those acres, 2,700 are owned and the rest rented. The farm also has four full-time employees and several H-2A workers.
His strategy for the operation is continuous improvement with a focus on profitability.
“One of my big goals is to just try to be efficient, whatever can be done. We use technology and buy bigger equipment to be able to do more with less,” he says. “Just finding people who want to work on our farm and want to help and understand how a farm works has been a big help for us.”
He also pushes his yields, working with NRCS on conservation programs and quickly adapting to new technology.
“We have moisture sensors in our fields that will tell me the optimal time to start and turn off irrigation. There’s automation in most of our wells, too. I can start them with my phone and turn them off. They’ll tell me if something’s going on,” he explains. “Our equipment with GPUs are an asset to see what’s going on in the field from my office. That’s been a huge blessing.”
Dilldine also purchased a commercial grain entity during the 2022 harvest season amid a drought that was leading to significant decreases in basis due to low river levels.
“It’s about 750,000 bushel storage. Right now, we can use about 600,000 of that capability,” he says. “I can dump trucks in about six minutes, and I can load them out in about 12 - which is pretty fast for a private grain facility.”
Adversity Strikes Twice
On top of losing his father, the beginning of Dilldine’s farming career was made even more challenging when he suffered a major injury that crushed two vertebrae in his back.
“I had a long road of recovery right in the beginning of farming,” he remembers. “I had to do a whole lot of talking on the phone and teaching somebody else how to run that sprayer. It was a lot to deal with.”
But he learned a valuable lesson that has served him well on the farm.
“I taught myself to be a whole lot more patient and to not be wide open all the time,” he says.
Dilldine’s wife, Skiver, who also assists on the farm when she’s not busy as a nurse practitioner, says she couldn’t be prouder of his progress.
“He didn’t have a mentor in his younger years to kind of guide him through some of the hard farming lessons, and he’s learned those on his own with the help of others. He’s just really put in a lot of legwork, a lot of tears and blood, and just really powered through all the adversities to come out on top,” she says.
Despite these challenges, Dilldine says he’s reached many of his farming goals - and others can too.
“I want young farmers to be aware that you can do it. It’s not impossible as often as it feels like,” he adds.
