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Peebles Organic Farms
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. Peebles decided on a vacant Paslode warehouse located just off Hwy 33 in eastern Augusta.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.
The market for Peebles Organic sweet potatoes in indicative of the versatility of the product. Brand names such as Costco (potato chips), Veggie Fresh for noodles, canning companies, and a host of grocery chains are all part of their customer base.
Organic agriculture as a whole is a constantly evolving and expanding market and Peebles Organics has positioned itself at the forefront not only in production, but management and consulting. Peebles has established himself as one of the premier organic consulting resources in the country.
2017 has been a challenging year for sweet potatoes, Peebles is seeing the fruits of his labor at harvest with yields of 30,000 pounds per acre (600 bushels). That’s 6 million pounds by the what. That’s a lot of sweet taters. Mechanical diggers pulled by tractors remove the sweet potatoes from the ground. Conveying chains move the product to a trailer behind the tractor where laborers remove them from the conveyor and place them in large wooden crates along the side of the trailers. When full, the crates are moved onto 18 wheelers and taken to the storage facilities. Even being mechanical, harvesting is a slow process. The tractors travel about .5 miles per hour, and cover only 5 acres per day.
“Considering the long planting season we had in the spring due to rain,” Peebles reflected, “it turned out really well. We don’t have enough room at Augusta, so we have made plans for temporary storage. That is a good problem to have. "
That's a lot of sweet taters"
When it comes to farming in White County, 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, Peebles reached a point where it was time to seriously 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 on Hwy 64E in Augusta, Peebles Farms Organic has grown to a 1770-acre total 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, Peebles’ operation is highly labor intensive and comes from family members, some local labor, and a pool of seasonal laborers which this fall reached 40+.
“We chop every acre we have,” Peebles 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 7 to 8 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”.
Using a GPS equipped auto-steer tractor and center pivot irrigation are about the only similarities between row crop farming and organic vegetable farming. Peebles 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. Peebles 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, something row crop farmers try to avoid. However, given the shift in consumer demand to organic farming, the food companies are willing to pay for labor intensive organic products.
“I have never had a drift problem from aerial or ground applications,” Peebles said. “Part of the organic certification process is that we have to notify neighbors within a thirty-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, buy 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.[1] 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% annually into 2020. In 2000, Americans consumed about four pounds of sweet potatoes each year. In 2015, that figure had almost double to 7.5 pounds per person. [2]
[1] USDA
[2] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/01/19/510436364/why-america-is-growing-the-most-sweet-potatoes-since-wwii
At left: Sweet Potato harvest, up close and personal, Peebles Organic Farms, Griffithville, AR.