My Turn

I was raised in the small town of Wisner, Louisiana. My mother was a registered nurse, and my father was a barber. Agriculture surrounded us, but I was a city boy. I didn’t know the difference between a cocklebur and a cotton plant. Before summer began between my junior and senior years of high school, Ray Young, a consultant who ... Read More »

I recall two farm visits during April 1978, my first month as an assistant county agent — cotton pest management in Lawrence County, Alabama. One involved a replant situation on a cold, wet Friday north of Town Creek. The other was an informative turnrow conversation with a grower near Courtland. I didn’t know much but was eager to learn. I ... Read More »

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” When asked this question in my younger years, my response was never “a farmer.” Not because I didn’t want to be one, but back in the day, not many “girls” chose that vocation. As a member of a fourth-generation farming family who raised cotton, corn, soybeans and wheat near Jackson, ... Read More »

Four decades ago, Dr. Raymond Sheperd and I were standing in Field 10 in one of his cotton nurseries at the Auburn Plant Breeding Unit. I was a young experiment station superintendent, and I fussed about how short the cotton was. Sheperd was the U.S. Department of Agriculture cotton breeder at Auburn and was developing root-knot resistant cotton lines. He ... Read More »

I am blessed to be a fourth-generation farmer and a second-generation California farmer. My parents, Ted and Deborah Sheely, moved to California from Arizona to farm cotton in California’s Central Valley in the 1970s. We are south of Fresno and receive less than 8 inches of annual rainfall. Farming in the land of fruits and nuts has its challenges as ... Read More »

I am a third-generation farmer in Dillon, South Carolina. The farm began as a dairy and tobacco operation and remained that way until the 1980s. My father, Roy Baxley, grew the farm and converted it to all row crops, consisting of cotton, peanuts, corn, soybeans and wheat. My dad gave me my love for farming, especially cotton. Growing up on ... Read More »

I grew up in Harmony, North Carolina, a small town in the Piedmont. Our farm primarily had beef cattle, beans, corn and small grain all grown on the typical red clay soils of the Piedmont. My father and grandfather farmed together. We had a 5-acre cotton allotment, but we quit growing cotton when I was young. Small cotton and tobacco ... Read More »