When it comes to farming in White County, Ark., most folks don’t think of sweet potatoes and pumpkins. But, just south of Griffithville, on the White/Prairie county line, third generation farmer Shawn Peebles has transformed soybean and rice acreage into a productive organic vegetable operation.
After years of row crop farming, Shawn reached a point where it was time to consider getting out of farming, or drastically change his operation. As part of a long standing family farm, he certainly didn’t want to get out. So, he sold his row crop equipment and decided to pursue other farming opportunities.
After a lot of research and following up with contacts in the vegetable business, organic vegetable farming opportunities began to open up. What started as a small operation on the family’s land in Augusta, Ark., Peebles Farms Organic has grown to a 1,770-acre organic vegetable operation in three counties, Woodruff, White and Prairie. The vegetable crops include pumpkins, sweet potatoes, green beans and peas. Being a totally organic farm, as required for his producer’s contract with food companies, Shawn’s operation is highly labor intensive. Family members and approximately 25 farm laborers provide the labor.
“We chop every acre we have,” Shawn said. “Since we are totally organic, there are no chemicals of any kind. We have tractors with GPS auto-steer for cultivating, but again, it’s just cultivating. We will cultivate seven to eight times per crop year, which amounts to about 13,000 acres. That’s a lot of cultivating and chopping, it gets expensive, but it has to be done.”
Shawn contracts with two major food companies to grow the vegetables. The companies guarantee a certain amount per acre, and provide the seed and/or plants and the harvesting equipment. Shawn’s basic responsibility as the contract grower is to oversee the crops from planting to harvest, insure crop fertility and maintain the farm operation’s compliance with the USDA’s total organic certification. Maintaining that certification dictates a very labor intensive farm operation. However, given the shift in consumer demand to organic farming, the food companies are willing to pay for organic products.
“I have never had a drift problem from aerial or ground applications,” Shawn said. “Part of the organic certification process is that we have to notify neighbors within a 30-mile radius of each farm we are here. Plus, today’s ag pilots are so aware of drift they try to avoid it at all cost. In fact, we use aerial application at times, but it is all organic fertilizers and things like that.”
The demand for sweet potatoes has grown tremendously in the last few years, thanks to national health experts promoting its healthy benefit and its versatility. According to the USDA, sweet potato consumption has double in the last 15 years.
In 2015, the farmers produced more sweet potatoes than any time since World War II, and the organic sweet potato market is expected to expand 4 percent annually into 2020. In 2000, Americans consumed about 4 pounds of sweet potatoes each year. In 2015, that figure had almost double to 7.5 pounds per person.
The expansion into sweet potatoes on the White/Prairie county line has necessitated Peebles Farms to have a large processing plant facility in the area. Shawn decided on a vacant warehouse located in eastern Augusta. “It would have been nice from a logistics standpoint to have located the plant closer to the sweet potato farm,” said Peebles. “But it didn’t work out. With the large storage area, we decided on this building.”
The 70,000 square foot city-owned building had been vacant for almost 18 years and required extensive roof repairs and other structural modifications. The major advantage of the building is the capacity to store the approximately 5 million pounds of sweet potatoes that are harvested of Peebles Farms Organics each year. Arkansas’ climate is conducive to storing sweet potatoes for extended periods of time which is timely for the holidays. The potatoes can even be stored until the following spring for Easter. The 2016 fall harvest saw the first sweet potatoes processed through the Peebles’ Organic plant. With a peak season workforce of 40, and the prospect for future expansion, the location of Peebles Organics to the Augusta plant was a win-win situation for Peebles and the local economy.
