Small farm, big operation
Nov 10, 2009 10:26 AM, By Hembree Brandon, Farm Press Editorial Staff
“We’ve gone from a very small, local family operation to one that has made a place in a very specialized market and is still growing. I believe there is a lot of opportunity in this business in the years ahead for those who can capitalize on trends and constantly improve efficiency.”
Allen Eubanks left Mississippi State University in 1992 with a degree in agricultural economics and returned to his family’s small truck farming operation at Lucedale, Miss. — “30 non-irrigated acres of mostly watermelons, with some peas, butterbeans, and cantaloupes.”
Since then, he’s gradually expanded acreage and crops, now serving major accounts all over the Southeast and several northern states, including the 800-pound gorilla in the supermarket business, Wal-Mart, and employing more than 250 people at peak periods.
And he said at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Agricultural Economics Association, there’s opportunity for other Mid-South growers to do the same.
“The business has been good for us,” he says. “We’ve gone from a very small, local family operation to one that has made a place in a very specialized market and is still growing. I believe there is a lot of opportunity in this business in the years ahead for those who can capitalize on trends and constantly improve efficiency.”
Eubanks Produce, Inc., which he runs with his wife, Janice, is an expansion of a tradition going back to his grandfather, who grew vegetables in the early 1900s. “It was in his blood,” he says, “and my father continued it while holding a full-tine job off-farm.
“I left MSU with my degree and felt I was pretty well trained to be a farm manager, so I set out to try and grow the business. By the mid-1990s, we’d increased to 80 acres of watermelons, with continuing small acres of vegetables.”
But a big problem, Eubanks says, was labor. “It was really tough getting the workers we needed. As things went along, we were able to hire about 20 migrant workers.”
Two big changes in 1997 made it a pivotal year for the operation.
“First, we were able to establish a relationship with Wal-Mart to supply them with watermelons. We expanded to 250 acres and installed drip irrigation.
“Unfortunately, we were dealt a blow by the weather, with 30 days of rain in May and June, which left half the crop rotting in the field. The migrant workers decided to go someplace else, and we were stuck with half a crop and nobody to get it out of the field.
