Arkansas

Ag Lender Warns Farm Finances Under Greatest Stress Since the 1980s

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 16:12:18 GMT

As combines chew through this year’s crops, farmers are faced with a bleak reality: this crop they’re harvesting is coming at a steep financial loss. And for some, this marks the fourth year in a row they won’t make any money.

“What the general public doesn’t realize is these things have not just occurred over the last six months. This started in 2021 and 2022,” says Tommy Young, who farms in Newport, Ark. “In our particular situation, we started noticing shortfalls in 2021 and 2022 simply because of the input costs.”

That worry and concern took center stage and was at the heart of a meeting in Brookeland, Ark., earlier this month. A meeting that was supposed to be just a handful of farmers at a local bank turned into more of a movement. And for farmers, there was one resounding message: We need help, and we need it now.

“I think when everyone, other farmers, started seeing how many farmers showed up, it changed the overall dynamic of the meeting. It made it become emotional. It made it become more than reverence, from the standpoint that it made me feel personally that I’ve not done anything wrong,” Young says.

‘It Felt Just Like a Funeral’

In the middle of harvest, farmers from across Arkansas, southern Missouri and Tennessee parked their combines to attend the meeting. Young says as he parked his vehicle and saw trucks lining the road and lines of people standing outside to get in, the somber mood became very real.

“It felt just like a funeral,” Young says. “And then when we got inside, you didn’t see signs being held up. You didn’t hear screaming or any kind of thing like that. You saw people that were genuinely concerned about the industry as a whole.”

Young says during that meeting, the frustration farmers voiced came down to three main concerns within the ag economy:

Record-high input costs
Low commodity prices
The loss of key export markets

It’s those three factors fueling a perfect storm, but farmers are considerably concerned about the record-high input costs and what’s fueling those in agriculture.

“All we can do is hope for the best, be as efficient as we possibly can be with what we’re doing, and then thinking things would change. Well, they have not changed. They’ve gotten worse,” Young says.

Ag Lender Says Farmers Are Seeing the Most Financial Stress Since the 1980s

Greg Cole is president and CEO of AgHeritage Farm Credit Services, which serves roughly 6,700 members across 24 counties in Arkansas. Cole started in ag lending in 1984, and he says as Arkansas farmers stare at loss on every crop they grow, it’s not a repeat of the 1980s, but it’s eerily similar.

“I can tell you this, this is the most stress I’ve seen since the ‘80s when you come to farm profitability, i.e. farmers losing money,” Cole says. “One positive we have now compared to the ‘80s is land values. Our land values are still positive, which gives some lendable equity —unlike in the 80s, when I started my career, when U.S. farmland prices plummeted in some areas up to 60%.”

With a drastic drop in commodity prices, but input prices still record or near-record high, Cole says farmers in Arkansas, specifically, have been eroding balance sheets for four straight years.

“We started seeing losses in ’22 when 40% of our producers lost money,” Cole says. “In ’23, about 50% lost money. And then last year, in ’24, 70% lost money, with the average loss of about $150 an acre. And that’s after they received about a $50 per acre ECAP payments. Today, we’re looking at where we stand now. We could have a similar level of losses in ‘25 that we had in ‘24. Even though in ’24, we had very strong yields. But now we have weaker yields.”

As mounting debt shows up on the balance sheets, Cole says there are two types of farmers seeing the most severe financial strain.

“The ones who rent most of the land, especially if they pay on the higher end of rent. And here in the Mississippi Delta, most farmers who have a lot of acres rent most of their ground,” Cole says. “And then young, beginning farmers who didn’t have the opportunity to build up a lot of equity. Those are the ones that have occurred these multiple year losses where their balance sheet debt has swollen to a level that’s hard to service a debt when you add the interest rate cost on top of it.”

Farmers On the Brink of Being Forced Out of Farming

Cole says in talking to farm credit colleagues from across the country, next to the central valley of California, farmers in the Mississippi region are in the most severe shape.

“There were 62 farm equipment sales in eastern Arkansas this past winter,” Cole says. “That’s the most I can recall, anecdotally speaking, than any time in my career since the 1980s. And I think what we’re looking at now is at least that many or more. It could be double that if we don’t get major intervention in the markets or an intervention from D.C.

Cole continues: “Really, what we need is another ad hoc payment, maybe in a form of an MFP-type payment that we received back in Covid. But we need some major help here, or we’re going to have a lot less farmers in 2026 and 2027.”

It’s a desperate plea across agriculture. Without some type of market or government intervention, some could be forced out of farming this year — similar to what happened in the 1980s.

“My dad, in 1978, went to Washington D.C., stood on the capitol and was there during that time when they drove tractors to D.C.,” Young says. “It was the same thing in Brookeland, Arkansas. And if this thing continues, I think it will go nationwide because we’ve got to get through this. And the president and congress have got to make it to where we have good markets, sustainable markets and markets that we can depend on long term.”

Largest Drop in Crop Cash Receipts Ever

It’s not just farmers in the Delta seeing the financial strain. Ag economist John Newton tells AgDay’s Michelle Rook that even though the overall net farm income picture from USDA looks strong, it’s a very different situation when you take out livestock and just look at crops.

“If you look at the data, crop cash receipts over the last three years have declined by $71 billion,” says Newton, executive head of Terrain. “When adjusted for inflation, that matches the largest decline that we’ve seen in history. So, the pressure in the crop space is very real.”

NCGA and ASA Also Sounding the Alarm

National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is also sounding the alarm , saying agriculture is nearing a financial crisis. According to a new study released by NCGA, nearly half (46%) of U.S. farmers believe we are on the brink of a farm crisis, and 65% are more concerned now about their farm financials than a year ago.

American Soybean Association (ASA)CEO Stephen Censky also sees and hears the growing concern among farmers.

“It’s tough, and I can hear it in the stress in our members’ voices Our members and our board of directors are really concerned right now,” Censky says. “Some say if things don’t turn around, if we don’t get markets back or if we get economic assistance — which is not our first choice — this could be their last year in farming. That’s pretty scary.”

Censky says this time in agriculture is more serious than the last trade war simply because crop prices are lower than they were in 2018, and input prices are significantly higher.

“I will say while those programs we had, the market facilitation payments (MFP), they help keep folks in business. They stop the blood loss. They help farmers survive until the next year, but it’s not a replacement for markets,” Censky says. “And no farmer wants to be dependent on getting his or her income from the government, or from the mailbox, rather than from the marketplace.”

Farmers are also voicing frustration lately that when government assistance is given, they are simply a pass-through. The payments keep input prices elevated, and also seem to prop up high land values.

“One of the things is that when you provide economic assistance or any kind of government payments, whether that is through the reference prices and the ARC and PLC programs under the farm programs, yes, that helps. It helps keep farmers in business and helps them pay the bills. But longer term, any form of government assistance like that gets capitalized into land rents and land values, and that has consequences as well for farmers,” Censky says.

Yet, Censky was part of the Trump administration. He served as the United States Deputy Secretary of Agriculture from 2017 through 2020. That was also during the first trade war with China, and he knows the loss of the Chinese market is completely out of farmers’ control.

“We have not been publicly calling for another MFP-type program. Our priority has been ‘Let’s get a deal with China on soybeans’, because having that market is what soybean farmers want,” Censky says. “And by restoring and getting rid of the retaliatory tariffs, and ideally getting some purchase commitments from China, would be like we did under the Phase One trade deal with China. That would be great. And that also puts a lid on, or a damper on, Brazilian expansion, which has long-term benefits for the U.S. soybean industry as well.”

Dalton Dilldine: Next-Generation Producer Follows in His Father's Footsteps

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 14:38:25 GMT

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.

Fallout from Francine: Hurricane Wreaks Havoc on Barge Traffic and Shutters Key Ports

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 21:13:00 GMT

Farmers in the southern U.S. rushed to harvest key crops like cotton and rice ahead of Hurricane Francine’s arrival.

Francine made landfall Wednesday as a Category 2 hurricane about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans, before weakening to Category 1. A state of emergency is in effect for Louisiana and Mississippi. New Orleans is under a shelter-in-place order after evacuation windows closed.

Impacts:
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said that as of Sept. 11, personnel were evacuated from 171 production platforms in the Gulf, 46% of the 371 manned platforms in operation there. People have been evacuated from three non-dynamically positioned (DP) rigs, equivalent to 60% of the five rigs of that type operating, with a total of four DP rigs have been moved out of the path of the storm, 20% of the 20 DP rigs operating in the Gulf. BSEE estimates that approximately 38.56% of the current oil production and 48.77% of the current natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut-in.

Barge traffic has also been interrupted, with Mike Steenhoek of the Soy Transportation Coalition noting that barge companies are not sending barge flotillas into the region until the storm has moved on.

USDA reported that as of Sept. 8, 72% of cotton bolls were open in Louisiana, 69% in Mississippi, 83% in Arkansas, 46% in Alabama, and 44% in Georgia, leaving those fields susceptible to damage from heavy rains and wind.

The toughest harvest rush for a rice 🌾 farmer, is going full throttle before a hurricane. Overwhelming emotional, fueled with adrenaline rushes, pushing the limits, and trying to be perfect at an unsustainable pace. I hope all is safe, 🙏
— Scott Matthews (@SMatthewsfarms) September 12, 2024

Several port locations have also been shuttered with Port Fourchon, Louisiana, closed to vessel traffic along with ports of New Orleans, Plaquemines, Cameron, Lake Charles and Houma.

Flood Warnings and Destructive Winds

As the storm’s center moved north through Louisiana, officials warned of potential tornadoes and dangerous storm surge. Francine is expected to continue into Mississippi Thursday, with flood warnings extending to Florida. Francine brought hurricane-force winds, heavy rainfall, and storm surge to coastal Louisiana.

New Orleans reported wind gusts of 78 mph as the eyewall passed through. This marks Louisiana’s first hurricane landfall since the devastating Hurricane Ida in 2021.

From Race Car Driver to Arkansas Farmer, How Travis Senter's Obsession With Data is Paying Off

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:10:56 GMT

If proof is in the pudding, Arkansas farmer Travis Senter’s sea of soybeans may be the sign of how paying attention to every detail can add up.

“It’s not uncommon for us to grow 70-bushel [per acre] beans, 80-bushel beans, 90-bushel beans. We can grow good soybeans here,” admits Senter, who farms in Keiser, Ark.

Senter’s soybean crop looks like a monster this year, but that’s not what his mind is focused on most days. Unlike many farmers you meet, he’s always thinking about technology and what’s next. For him, big yields start with collecting and recording as much data as possible every time a piece of equipment enters the field.

“I hate not recording data when we’re going across the field, no matter what we’re doing,” he says. “I want to make sure we’re recording and getting that information because you don’t know when you’re going to use that information.”

That’s a lot of data, considering Senter’s family, along with their local farming partner, farm more than 20,000 acres. Senter says it’s technology and data that help him manage all those acres effectively and efficiently.

“I’ve always been interested in computers, building computers,” says Senter. “Whether it’s technology or equipment, I’m always trying to be a cutting edge. When autosteer came along and when John Deere introduced all this technology with the JDLink System , my father was a little bit older, and he couldn’t really figure out some of this stuff. So that was sort of my niche to get involved in farming and to really ramp up our technology side of things.”

A Generational Shift

Finding a niche is exactly what Senter did, and he went all in. If you walk into his office today, there’s not a single piece of paper on his desk. Everything is focused on technology, including dual 49” displays for his computer.

More Screen Real Estate!…..👌🏻 #farmtech #opscenter @JohnDeere pic.twitter.com/MkeSHEwTEK
— Travis Senter (@traviss22) April 15, 2024

That view is quite the contrast from Travis’ dad’s office. Walk into his office, which is just across the hall, and there’s a clear difference in technology use.

“I have an iPhone, but no, I don’t have a computer,” says Travis Senter Sr., with a smile.

Instead, the way he keeps records is a little more old school: he uses a classic pen and paper.

“I write it down. I have one of these books for every year of my farm and career,” he says, while holding up a composition notebook. “I write down planting dates, varieties, irrigation. I run out of pages, and I write down everything, and then I go back to it.”

Travis Senter, Jr., talks to his dad Travis Senter, Sr.

(Mike Byers )

Travis Sr. may be more old school, but he finds great value—and pride—in what his son’s already done.

“When he came home out of college, he was already running and gunning. I knew I had something special,” says Travis Sr. “With my son coming on board, helping us, it has really opened up things. He brought a lot of new things to the farm that makes it easier, and I love all that stuff. It’s just I’m a little slower at it. I want him to get it, and we just keep investing in it, because we know it helps the farm.”

The Go-To-Guy for Technology

Travis Senter isn’t just the technology whisperer on the family farm, he’s everybody’s go-to guy in the Keiser area for technology. And how he learns and keeps up on the latest tech trends is by simply experimenting.

“It’s a lot of trial and error,” he admits. “You want to go all in and buy the next greatest thing, but that’s not always the best way. I’ve watched a lot of farmers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for things that they’ll not use in two years from now, because that company will go bankrupt,” he adds. “So, you’ve got to do your research and try to figure out exactly what works best for you.”

Monitoring the progress! #farmtech #opscenter @JohnDeere @GoGreenwayEquip pic.twitter.com/dzE0bFcToh
— Travis Senter (@traviss22) October 21, 2023

When Senter finds something that works, he goes all in. That was the case when he was trying to find a way to stay connected to all of the family’s machines on the farm, and it’s not just a few tractors to keep track of. They have a massive fleet. Senter says they operate 33 tractors, three cotton pickers, three combines, four sprayers, a number of excavators and 20 semi-trucks.

“We had one or two units we were swapping from this tractor to that tractor, and so it was kind of a pain. I finally worked out a deal and thought, ‘What if we just get everything connected? Get autosteer on everything, put displays in everything, do recording on everything,’ because that makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about what’s recording here, what’s recording there. Just bring it all in.”

Ops Center

(Travis Senter)

How Racing Made Him a Better Farmer

Senter has a love for technology, and he also has a love for racing with rows and rows of awards and trophies to show for it.

“In what I call my previous life, I was a race car driver and not only a race car driver, I was also a race car builder,” he says.

Travis Senter Racing

(Travis Senter)

For 20 years, Senter traveled across the country, and even the world, building and driving race cars.

“Data collection in racing is probably done more so than in farming,” says Senter. “I had extreme amounts of data on my race car in 2005 to record where I go, where I’m at, all this information that I would study and try to be better. And so that exact thing is what amplified my sensors and my data collection for farming.”

Senter says the ability to collect information in racing is what helped him become an even better race car driver. Today, his ability to collect information and data is what is making him an even better farmer.

“Building race cars, racing race cars, has definitely helped me be a better farmer, which is strange to say,” says Senter.

Using ChatGPT as a Tool on the Farm

Senter’s time on the track may also be why he’s so willing to take risks today and try things that are unheard of on the farm. One example is the way he’s grabbed onto artificial intelligence (AI).

“Taking ChatGPT, for example, you can throw some of your data in there and it will spit out what you’re expected to make. And, if you can throw in enough information and give it the right prompts, I feel like we could change our decision-making,” he says.

I asked ChatGPT to describe an image I took this afternoon and then I asked it to draw that description with Dall-E3. The results are amazing. #ChatGPT pic.twitter.com/ei2sIDayIA
— Travis Senter (@traviss22) October 20, 2023

Last summer, before there was the ability with ChatGPT to add files, Senter and his own son created their own AI model. The goal was to take their 10-year yield history in every field, add in planting and harvesting dates, the varieties or hybrids they planted, and combine that information with weather data.

“Then you can compare information and say, ‘My best year of yield was when I planted this date, this was the average temperature during pollination.’ You can derive that from all this weather information,” Senter says. “So, if I planted at this particular date with this particular variety, and I know the pollination date and what temperature I’m going to have this year, maybe this will help me generate better yield information so I can market better. It opens up a whole realm of possibilities when you are able to throw in more information to this.”

Exploring Virtual Reality

Another unique idea he’s using on the farm is virtual reality.

“I’m not really a gamer, because I’m sort of too old for that. But I was a gamer, and I’ve always had VR headsets,” says Senter.

He says he really likes Apple’s new VR technology called Apple Vision Pro , but prior to that, the other VR headsets available didn’t give him any “wow” factor.

“The Apple Vision Pro is amazing with what it can do,” says Senter. “When you put it on and get it calibrated to you, it’s extremely impressive how your eyes are basically your cursor. You just look at something in it, and you click your fingers together, and it works.”

More Apple Vision Pro. Currently it isn’t great for everyday use, but as things progress this type of augmented reality will be everywhere. #AppleVisionPro @JohnDeere pic.twitter.com/kYxMDs8qUG
— Travis Senter (@traviss22) April 28, 2024

He admits that VR headsets are bulky today. But in the future, he thinks the technology will be in a pair of sunglasses.

“If you imagine 10 years from now, this is going to be smaller, and when you’re walking in the field and see a weed, you can take a picture of it. You can enter that in ChatGPT, and you can ask what that weed is and how you can kill it. And it’ll tell you,” says Senter.

He says it’s a simple way to ask a question, and it’s one that won’t be judged.

“When I ask that question to a professor or a doctor, they may look down on me and think I should probably already know this, and maybe I should or maybe I forgot it. It doesn’t matter. But I get an answer from ChatGPT, and then I can follow it up with more questions. And when you think about that, it opens up a whole realm of possibilities.

Combing Through the Data

Even with those tools, it all goes back to data and capturing as much data as possible on every acre and with every pass. That’s what helps Senter solve some of the problems on his farm.

“If I look at a field and see a problem spot, I’ll instantly pull out my phone and figure out when we sprayed that and when that spot got missed, so I can come back and fix that,” says Senter. “I then know when the applicator missed it. I know what he missed doing, for example.”

Travis Senter checks his mobile app

(Mike Byers)

He says whether it’s when he’s spraying, planting or harvesting, he looks at the data every night, no matter the time of year.

“When I get home from work, I’ll probably spend two or three hours on a computer every night going through fields, looking at maps and just making sure everything got planted right or everything was sprayed right. And that’s usually why I do it,” says Senter.

In the fall, he says it may be midnight before he gets home, but he always goes through the data to make sure everyone is on the same page.

By carefully calculating every move on his farm, he’s controlling what he can control, instead of leaving it up to chance.

“We take every single truck across one scale, just that one scale. We record that information and I’ll enter that in some spreadsheets. I’ve tried different software companies, but Excel and Google Sheets are my saving grace from some of that,” says Senter. “I’ll enter all that information every single night after we get done, so I know exactly how much grain is in the field, and then I’ll send out a report the next day showing exactly how many acres we harvested, how much grain is in this bin and what their average moisture was. There’s lots of information that we try to keep up with.”

A Valuable Tool Today: John Deere Operations Center Mobile

One thing he’s excited to use this fall is something he suggested to John Deere in the past few years. Senter relies heavily on John Deere’s Operations Center Mobile app year-round. He says it’s extremely valuable to help him see real-time information, including fuel information.

What’s new this year is when Senter pulls into a field to harvest, the app will give him an estimated time of completion.

“It gives you a percentage of how much you have left, and what time you should be done. And it’s an adjustable scale,” he says. “I kept mentioning to Deere that we really need a way to know that information, just like when you go on a trip and use GPS for your trip, you know your ETA and you’re trying to beat that time of arrival. We try to beat that time to finish harvest. The app actually keeps everybody up to date of how much is left in that field.”

With that real-time information, Senter can be more strategic about when they finish a field and move to the next, making sure to miss heavy traffic times, like when school gets out in the afternoon. He says it’s a handy feature and one he’s excited to use this fall.

From the race track to the farm field, Senter knows the race to farm effectively and efficiently isn’t slowing down.

“I’m always learning. I’m always finding ways to integrate new things,” says Senter.

Watch the full feature on Senter and how he thinks about technology on the farm differently.

Stunning Collection of 50,000 Farmland Marbles Began With 12 Boxes of Stolen Arrowheads

Fri, 24 May 2024 18:56:30 GMT

How did 12 boxes of superb arrowheads stolen from beneath a boy’s bed lead to the greatest collection of farmland marbles ever gathered?

Welcome to Wyman Atwood’s unlikely tale of obsession, deceit, and an astounding 50,000-marble haul.

Cottonmouth

In 1963, Wyman Atwood was born to cotton in Greene County, Arkansas, a stone’s throw from the Missouri Bootheel. Along Highway 49, outside the tiny town of Marmaduke, Atwood was raised on level land roughly 5 miles from Crowley’s Ridge, a geologic spine rising 250’ above the flats, running nearly unbroken for 200 miles from southeast Missouri to Arkansas’s Phillips County, and a sustained haunt of Native Americans for millennia.

Atwood’s grandfather, John Henry, spilled out of Kentucky in roughly 1900 and bought timberland outside Marmaduke. He cleared old-growth hardwood on 1,000 acres. “Our farmland had heavy Indian presence,” Atwood recalls. “When my grandfather was cutting trees, he uncovered so many stone tools that he’d carry the big ones to a fence line and drop them, just to get rid of the nuisance of rocks in the field.”

Atwood’s father, Earl, inherited the farm reins. In 1969, he bought his 5-year-old son a motorbike and loosed the boy on rough-and-tumble adventure. “Redneck kid on a Honda 50,” Atwood says. “I rode to ditches and sloughs all day and found fun. In a couple more years, from the moment my toes could push in a tractor or truck clutch, I was operating farm machinery.”

In 1979, an elderly farming neighbor introduced Atwood to a modest arrowhead collection—all pieces collected within a mile radius. Atwood went straight to his own farm and began walking rows. He hit a motherlode in a mere afternoon of searching: An inordinate amount of Native American points atop family dirt that had never been previously picked.

Shortness of breath; rush of blood; cottonmouth; and an uncanny sixth sense. Arrowhead fever roared through Atwood, and he welcomed the disease. Every waking hour of opportunity, he was a shadow in the spring or winter fields, marching the rows and finding absolute treasures: abundant Hardin and Dalton specimens—prehistoric points often in fantastic condition.

“I was hard core. There were days when I went out and filled a pocket in 30 minutes with beauties,” he explains. “No doubt our land was home to Indians for thousands of years. My hunting got to the stage where if a point wasn’t in great condition, I’d leave it right there in the field. It’s fair to say that I became obsessed. I didn’t care if they were worth anything. All I cared about was finding them for their own history and wonder.”

Within several years, Atwood amassed a phenomenal collection as the sole hunter on an arrowhead Shangri-La. He slept atop his most prize pieces, filling a dozen shoeboxes to the brim with tools magnificently crafted from jasper, flint, chert, quartzite, greenstone, and more. The boxes, lined head to toe down the side of Atwood’s bed, were a virtual museum.

“For a boy on a farm, life was so sweet,” he recalls. “Hunting those arrowheads became part of me and made things even sweeter.”

The sweet was about to go bitter.

Wink of Fate

The family farmhouse sat alone—always unlocked. Atwood and Earl typically worked minutes away, darting in and out to eat, use the phone, or grab a necessity.

In 1983, Atwood’s first cousin, likewise an avid arrowhead hunter, visited from Florida. Excited by the arrival of his relative, Atwood dashed to his bedroom, anxious to show off the collection of smokers.

Dropping to his knees, Atwood reached under the bed and pulled out a shoebox with no heft. Empty.

Down the line Atwood went, sliding out the boxes. Empty.

The twelfth box, the last in line, curiously was still full.

Time slowed down as the violation washed over Atwood. “I figured someone dumped all the boxes into a bag and maybe ran out of time on the last box. To this day, about 40 years later, I don’t know who stole my arrowheads and I couldn’t prove a thing,” he explains.

“I’ll never, never forget the feeling of realizing someone had stolen my arrowheads right from my own room in my own house—someone that had to be very close to me because it was an inside job.”

“It’s hard to put into words, but my arrowhead fuse was burnt from that day on. I’d still walk the rows sometimes, but my love of hunting points was never the same. It kind of died.”

Enter a wink of fate and Bertis Walker, the marble maestro.

Hooked

Well over a decade past the theft, Atwood was struck by the charms of Tanginna Walker, and fell in with her father, Bertis, a Greene County farmer who became more of a brother, rather than a father-in-law. The pair of men were inseparable. Find one, find the other, in a chain of hunting, fishing, riding gravel, and marbling.

Marbling?

Walker, whether by fixation or pure passion, was in the process of amassing a lifetime assemblage of tens of thousands of marbles plucked from farmland and old house sites.

Rekindling the collecting fires, Walker became Atwood’s marble mentor, patiently poring through the pages of marble collecting books, teaching Atwood marble history, type, rarity, origin, dates, and more. Atwood contracted a double-portion of the marble virus racing through Walker’s veins.

“I got hooked on marbles,” Atwood recalls. “I’d be in the rows looking any chance I got, going with Tanginna or going alone. Pretty soon, those marbles started adding up.”

Sincerely. But why are tiny, colored spheres—children’s toys—scattered in volume on farmland?

Keepsies

Before the advent of modern agriculture machinery, farmland was dotted with homes. “Every 40 acres or so had at least one house and some farms had clusters of sharecropper houses,” Atwood says. “When you look out today and see empty land, it might not have looked that way just 50 years ago or more.”

Within a given geography, for example, where timber was cleared in the late 1800s, and tenant families moved on and off the ground until the 1960s, scores of children spread across generations were associated with a particular shotgun or dog trot house, i.e., the actors changed, but the stage remained the same.

All those kids, regardless of family income level, possessed the ubiquity of childhood: marbles. In an age prior to television access, and decades before home computers, video games, the internet, or iPhones, kids shot marbles for keepsies in front or back yards, in barn dirt, under porches, and beneath shade trees.

Affordably priced, depending on the decade, at 5 cents to 20 cents per bag at general stores and commissaries, or acquired via giveaways at service stations and shoe stores, marbles were the great equalizer of childhood. Some kids had a little; most had a lot.

“I think all the time about the kids who owned these marbles I find,” Atwood says. “Many of those kids didn’t have too many other possessions besides those marbles and that makes me sincerely grateful for the blessings I’ve been given in life.”

The kids are gone. The houses are gone. The marbles remain. Agates, alabasters, cat-eyes, clays, glazed clays, and more, the marbles of yesterday hide under the dirt—waiting patiently to reveal their color and join the 50,000-strong collection of Wyman Atwood.

Past to Present

Whether climbing in a side-by-side for a short ride to a nearby house site, or driving a truck to more distant locations, Atwood’s blood pumps hard. “On my way to a hunt, I’m full of anticipation, not sure what I’ll find in the sandy dirt. Once I hit the rows, I go into deep concentration and leave the world behind. It’s all about the hunt—finding is just the temporary reward.”

“It’s a unique feeling where I think about good times gone by and great friends of my past, and it makes me appreciate what I have now,” he notes. “There is much more going on in those rows than nostalgia. I’ll have a talk with Jesus when I’m walking and I’ll know that’s right where I need to be.”

With every marble spotted against the mocha soil, Atwood bends over, pulls the sphere out of the past, and gently tucks it into a front pocket. “I love marbles as a hobby and I’ll buy some special ones from time to time, but the ones that matter are those that come out of the fields. Chipped or cracked or even crushed—it makes me no difference. I could care less about the value of the objects I find.”

But what if the value of the object is $15,000—cash on the barrelhead?

No Means No

On April 18, 1991, several years past the heartache of bedroom theft, Atwood walked into a field with random hopes—coins, bear teeth, clay pipe stems, or whatever curios the rows might offer. Minutes into the hunt, Atwood spotted a wide base sticking up from the sandy dirt. He pulled; the point didn’t budge. He wiggled; the point gave the barest sway. He pulled again; 4.5” of a knobbed Hardin slid from the soil and saw sunlight for the first time in several thousand years. A stunner.

Atwood knelt beside an adjacent gar hole and washed away dirt from the serrations, shocked by the quality of the smoker. Forgoing the relative safety of his own pocket, he kept the soft flesh of his hand clasped tightly around the Hardin and made for home, where he immediately deposited it into a foam-lined case.

Word travels fast. The next morning, to Atwood’s surprise, he heard a knock on his front door.

“There was this doctor on my steps from in town that was well-known to buy arrowheads,” Atwood details. “He said, ‘I want to see that arrowhead you found.’”

Atwood retrieved the case and pointed at the Hardin, declining to remove the piece. The doctor took one look and fingered a knot of hundred-dollar bills: “I want that arrowhead.”

“Not for sale,” Atwood answered.

The doctor peeled off 30 bills—$3,000—and placed them on a table.

“No, sir. Not for sale,” Atwood reiterated.

“I’ll be back. I’ll be right back,” responded the doctor, confident in tone.

True to his word, the doctor returned in 20 minutes with a bulkier knot.

“He slapped down $6,000, and I said, ‘No,’ again,” Atwood recalls. “He went right up to $10,000, and I told him politely, ‘No means no.’”

Three days later, Atwood again heard a knock at the door. The doctor was back with $15,000 in cash. Atwood turned it down.

“Everybody told me I was stupid,” Atwood laughs. “I may be stupid, but I told that man the arrowhead was special. I told him I was supposed to find it and it wasn’t for sale. End of story.”

“It’s true that I’m crazy, but it’s also true that I’m the guy who loves what he finds for the story of it.”

Uncovered

Atwood has lost count.

At a total between 50,000 and 75,000, his marbles rest in foam-bottom display cases, glass lamps, countless jars, and an end table with a clear top.

“It’s not about the numbers and it’s not about the value,” Atwood emphasizes. “We’ll pass these marbles on to our grandkids and they can do what they want.”

Beyond marbles or arrowheads, he urges others to foster outdoor interests of any type. “Take your kids and grandkids outside at every opportunity. Get them off the television and phone. If you spend time with them outside, then they’ll take an interest in nature or history or something, and that’s when you praise them, to help build that interest.”

Expect Atwood to stay on the hunt, patiently adding to his marble mountain.

“Life took me from arrowheads to marbles, and there’s so much in our dirt still to be uncovered,” Atwood adds. “It’s coming to the top and I want to be there when it pops out.”

For more articles from Chris Bennett ( cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud

Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

2024 Top Producer Next Gen Award Winner: Finding Opportunities Between the Rows

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 23:02:44 GMT

The work never stops, even if the machines do.

In Newport, Ark., Hallie Shoffner is focused on potential at her 2,000-acre operation, SFR Seed, a family business specializing in seed production and research. Shoffner is carrying on a mission her mother began in 1988.

“She trained me in how to increase pure seed stock of soybeans and rice, and it’s been a journey of me learning what she did, and then adopting new practices in the field, particularly in terms of rice work,” says Hallie Shoffner, Top Producer of the Year Next Gen Award winner, sponsored by Pioneer and Fendt.

It is somewhat of a new practice for the operation, but they now grow and maintain about 20 different rice varieties in partnership with USDA.

“We’ve been very lucky to have them helping us out in the field, so that we can build our own rice purity program,” Shoffner says.

Shoffner was raised in these fields and spent her childhood between the rows.

“When I was little, my mom gave me an option. She said, ‘You can go to church with your grandmother, or you can go scout cotton with your dad,’” Shoffner says. “And that, as a kid, that’s an easy choice, right? Because he would take me to McDonald’s, and we’d go, which he still does today. We’d stop, and he’d say, ‘Go pick me 100 squares.’ And so we’d go out, we’d pick them, bring them back to the tailgate, open them up, look for bugs, and those are some of my best memories with my dad.”

After college, encouraged to get out of ag, Shoffner lived all over the world: from Nashville to India, to Seattle, to Arkansas, then on to Peru and Spain.

“I tried a lot of different things,” Shoffner says. “I tried grant writing, I tried nonprofit work, I tried marketing, and I really didn’t find anywhere where I fit in.”

But agriculture was calling.

“My dad needed to retire because he got his dementia diagnosis,” Shoffner says. “And they said, you can come back if you want. If you don’t, we’ll just shut it down. And I thought no, please don’t do that.”

Working and training with her mother, in 2019 Shoffner took the lead as CEO and continues to focus on growing the business, searching for opportunities in specialty crops and value-added production.

“In the Delta, we’re so focused on commodities, we’re so focused on volume that we kind of lose perspective on the specialty work,” Shoffner says. “And there is a push now, knowing that the Delta has water, and places like California do not, there’s going to be a big push for specialty work here in the south.”

Shoffner is also focusing her energy on sustainability.

“I’ve seen the pressures that climate change puts on farmers, we have had either income or crop loss due to extreme weather events that are becoming consistently more inconsistent,” she says.

It’s a message and a call to action she is passionate about sharing.

“Farmers are doing their part to combat the 10% carbon emissions that we are contributing to greenhouse gases,” Shoffner says. “We need support from other industries. If we’re making the investments to go to no-till, if we’re making the investments in technology that we need to become more environmentally sustainable, other industries need to do so as well.”
This includes building a future together that makes the most of modern gene editing tools and technology.

“We can use technology to create plants that are hardier in the face of climate change, that yield better, that are disease resistant,” she says. “I think that’s the future, and we are going to become involved in a big way.

Shoffner takes this cause seriously because she has already reaped benefits from the past.

“I’m extremely privileged; I come from a long history of farming,” Shoffner says. “I’m a sixth-generation farmer. I will inherit land that’s been in our family for over 100 years. A path has been paved for me; it’s my responsibility to do the best with it that I can.”

It’s a mission she learned from the days in the field with her father and from watching her mother, the scientist.

“I watched her walk confidently into every room and speak her mind; she was the expert,” Shoffner says. “And I knew that I could do anything because I saw her do anything.”

Shoffner pours confidence and precision into every day as she works to carry on a legacy of innovation.

“I’m proud to be a farmer,” she says. “Like I said, farmers are the ultimate innovators. We have been since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, and I am proud to be a part of that generation.”

2024 Top Producer of the Year Finalist PJ Haynie: Advocacy And Tenacity

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 18:39:35 GMT

No step is too big for Top Producer finalist, PJ Haynie. Deep family roots are the foundation of his farming legacy.

“My family lineage dates back to my great-great-grandfather, who was the first African American to come out of slavery and purchase 60 acres of land on Sept. 14, 1867, in Northumberland County, Virginia,” Haynie says.

Today, his family still owns and operates a portion of that land, which is now spread across four counties in the northern neck of Virginia and near the Chesapeake Bay. His accomplishments led to be named a finalist for Top Producer of the Year, which is sponsored by BASF, Case IH, and Rabo Agrifinance.

“I spent a lot of time with my dad, and I was his walking shadow,” Haynie says. “And I tell folks that my dad tricked me into farming, you know, as I was on the floor, carpet farming with my toys, I matriculated to the bigger toys, the real ones.”

He started driving at age seven and by 10 replaced a 40-year-old hired hand. After graduating from Virgina Tech, Haynie returned to the family operation looking to build a future with a focus on technology and improving efficiency.

“Instead of planting from sunup to sundown, dad would say, ‘Hey, you can take that bubble on that roof, and you can work half the night, can’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ So, he said, ‘I will get you into big fields, so you can work the night, and that way, you know, it increased our productivity with the equipment by being able to work longer days and longer hours,” Haynie says.

Today, as one of five kids, he and his four sisters still work together on the farm. But in 2010, while helping start and run a nonprofit called the National Black Growers Council, Haynie found himself in the Arkansas Delta.

He tells the story of how he and his father thought about the expansion.

“If we had a farm down south, we could probably start planting three to four weeks before we start here in Virginia,” Haynie says. “And with the equipment, we have our own trucks, let’s haul a tractor and a planter down and some equipment down, get it done, and then bring it back up to Virginia to spread the cost of that equipment over more acres.”

Sixteen hours and a thousand miles from home, Haynie went to work, building a satellite operation in Phillips County Arkansas, roughly 25 miles west of the Mississippi River.

“Here in the Delta, we have a lot of flat land,” he says. “And that’s a little different than the landscape in Virginia.”

No rolling hills and natural drainage, instead Haynie’s learning to plant on raised beds and furrow irrigate. It also opened the door to his newest endeavor: restarting an abandoned rice mill.

“When we went to this facility, we saw a diamond in the rough; we saw an opportunity,” he says. “A state-of-the-art facility that was constructed brand new in 2016 that had close to 4,000-bu. storage capacity and the milling capacity. They processed about 22 metric tons of rice per hour.”

Today, he’s running the nation’s only Black-owned rice mill.

“As a commodity farmer, no matter how much corn or wheat or soybeans that I grow that are for feed, you can’t directly take that home and feed it to your family,” Haynie says.

And thanks to new USAID contracts, he’s helping feed the world. It’s a mission he takes seriously as a farmer and a member of the Black row-crop farming community.

“You know, in 1920, there were a million Black farmers in this country, and African Americans owned 16 million acres of land. Present day, there are less than 15,000 Black row crop farmers, and less than 2 million acres of Black-owned land. And if we don’t continue to keep our foot on the gas, Black men and women in row crop production agriculture are going to be extinct.”

It’s a mission he’s working to fulfill every day.

“I’m hoping that my interest in my advocacy work, will show others in the country and other young men, who I was in their shoes one day, that through hard work and tenacity and faith, the opportunities can come your way,” he says.

Congratulations to PJ Haynie, a finalist for the 2024 Top Producer of the year.