My Turn

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 »

I am an only child and a third-generation Georgia farmer. As a little boy, I was fascinated with equipment and loved going to the farm with my dad, Kenneth. There’s a lot of truth to the phrase “following in your father’s footsteps.” While walking behind him in the field, I saw Dad’s bootprints in the dirt and tried to put ... Read More »

Greetings from the University of Georgia Tifton Campus! We have been celebrating a momentous occasion at UGA Tifton, and I would like to share that event with you. A bill passed by the Georgia General Assembly in August 1918 created the Georgia Coastal Plain Experiment Station, now UGA Tifton. Tifton was selected as the location for the station in May ... Read More »

After many years of the Cotton Farming magazine staff asking me to write a “My Turn” article, I did so in May 2017. I received so many positive reactions from the readers I thought I would try again. This time I want to focus on using lobbying in the USA to push agriculture forward in a positive direction. As I ... Read More »

I was raised northeast of Lubbock, Texas, on a cotton, grain sorghum, wheat and cattle farm near the community of Farmer, which is just north of Lorenzo. Both of my grandfathers farmed, and I remember them and my dad talking about the importance of leaving the land in better shape than it was when you started. The farm was homesteaded ... Read More »