By contracting to buy local crops, Food City is helping Carroll County farmers make a living by doing what they love.

Until recently, many of the farmers had to find full-time jobs elsewhere and farm when they could. While doing this, they were often in competition with one another for their share of the market, which often drove prices down. Now, there’s guaranteed money, unity among former rivals, and a sense of local pride when they see their wares in Food City and Super Dollar stores.

“They have involved the whole area to make it possible for the farmers of this area to be able to come back to the farm and be dedicated farmers instead of having to have a full-time job and try to farm on the side,” said Virginia Produce owner Moir Beamer. “They have made it possible for several of our farmers that were working a full-time job to come back to the farm, where they wanted to be all along.”

At the same time, many of Carroll’s farmers are working on achieving Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) certification, to ensure the food they provide is the best anywhere.

Food City’s efforts to sell locally grown produce in its stores created the opportunity for several local farmers to concentrate on farming single crops. This is allowing individual farmers to focus on growing one particular crop, and opens the doors for other farmers to step in and specialize in other crops.

Ricky Berrier, a farmer from Cana who grows apples and peaches, said by concentrating on certain crops and leaving the rest to other farmers, it breeds a sense of cooperation, in that the farmers aren’t in direct competition with one another any more.

“A lot of farmers in Carroll County were competitive,” Berrier said. “Growers were trying to sell to the same market and sometimes it would drive prices down. By doing it like this, instead of competitive, it’s cooperative. Because there’s such a large demand for the product, it’s more than most any one farmer can do. It takes the services of other farmers. Instead of competing for that market, you’re having to cooperate to fill the market. Now the farmers aren’t worried about competing any more so they might have a practice they do that they can pass on to other farmers. It’s the way farming will probably have to do to stay more competitive.”

Cabbage farmer J.C. Banks said not having to worry about beating another farmer to get a crop in and sold has created a more unified agricultural community in Carroll County.

“Now you have multiple farmers put together, we all talk,” Banks said. “Years ago, (broccoli farmer) James Light and I would have never given each other our farming secrets. Now we talk almost every night.”

Although bigger farmers are concentrating on single crops, they’re not the only ones getting in on the action. Beamer said many smaller farms are also reaping the benefits from the program.

“One thing we do here for the smaller farmers, the ones who aren’t capable of doing one item, such as cabbage, they do a small portion of the pumpkins to make it come together,” Beamer said. “Another one may do a small portion of gourds. All of it to make the full mix. We try to bring the smaller farmer into it where he can compete in today’s world like the larger farmer. The program doesn’t leave the little man out of it.”

Laurel-based sweet corn farmer Alan Worrell said knowing beforehand how much of a particular crop to harvest, plus how much that harvest will bring when it sells, allows farmers to make a living on their farms and make their operations more efficient.

“The biggest advantage to the farmers is they’ll come to us in the spring and give us a pricing form,” Worrell said. “We’re not subject to market fluctuation. When we start planting our crop, we pretty much know what we’re going to get out of it. If you give us a target to hit, most of us have gotten pretty developed at hitting the target.

“It’s a tremendous risk to grow an acre of produce. It’s a pretty substantial investment and if we’re growing it in hope of getting a buyer and the hope of getting a reasonable market price, that causes a lot of sleepless nights. If we know we have someone interested in the product, we know they’re going to buy it and buy a targeted amount of it at a set price, that allows us to put in infrastructure on the farms, to expand and do what we need to do to do it right and safe. It’s a tremendous opportunity and one that few farmers truly realize. Farmers, through history, have been price takers. We take what someone else tells us they’ll give. For us to know what we’re going to get out of something, we basically know what we’re getting before we start. It allows us to make a realistic projection that we can present to different financial institutions. It makes everything work better. We’ve got a sure thing on the other end. All we have to do is deliver the crop.”

Berrier said having that information allows the farmers to treat their farms like the businesses they are.

“I’m a believer that you have to have your crop sold before you harvest it,” he said. “You don’t want to pick it and hope you can sell it. You need to have something in place before you harvest. That’s where programs like this hit home with us. We know that we have it sold. It’s not something handed to us. It’s something we’ve all worked hard to achieve. I think the misconception of farmers is we’re not businessmen. Farmers are businessmen and we try to budget and make adjustments. Our goal is to make a profit on what we’re doing. It’s the goal of any businessman. We’re trying to sustain a living.”

And like any local business, if it’s successful, it’s most likely helping others in the area do well.

“We’re able to grow a bigger crop, more products,” Banks said. “We buy the material, the fertilizer, the land. There’s a tax base created because we have more land. With Food City riding with us in the boat, that’s a lot more money coming back home. This is coming to Carroll County. The checks come to us. We pay the labor, we pay Southern States; we give a lot of money back to the local economy.”

A lot of the local produce is packed and shipped out either at Virginia Produce or at the Southwest Virginia Farmers Market, which allows farmers access to its hydrocooler and other services.

“There is more produce going through the Farmer’s Market that is grown in Carroll County than there has ever been before,” Banks said. “There is more local produce than there has ever been in the past.”

There’s also more local produce making its way through area Food City and Super Dollar stores, a fact that has made its mark with more than a few area consumers.

“I’ve got a lady that I rent off of, a farm,” Banks said. “We grow gourds on her place. She saw Moir packing the gourds here. She went to a Food City and saw the same gourds. That was really impressive to her. That probably bought Food City a customer for life because of that.”

In addition to the benefits of their association with Food City, area farmers have also gained from the help of Virginia Cooperative Extension Agents Wythe Morris and Allen Straw.

Beamer said having attentive help outside the farm is a benefit the farmers can and should use to their advantage. He said Morris treats each individual farmer as if that’s his only concern at that point in time.

“We’ve got an extension agent in Carroll County who has put his heart into it as much as the farmers have put their heart into growing it and as much as Food City has put its heart into selling it,” Beamer said. “Wythe puts all his heart and his time into it. These fellows here, he and Allen Straw, if there’s a problem they run into, they’re there like that. They’re the go-to guys when you have a problem. That’s one thing we have here that a lot of places don’t have.”

Morris and Straw are working with several Carroll County farmers in becoming GAP certified. The GAP program is intended to assess a participant’s efforts to minimize the risk of contamination of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and miscellaneous commodities by microbial pathogens based on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables.”

“Carroll County has so many vegetable growers in the county, we’re trying to be proactive and do it before regulations are handed down to us,” Morris said. “We’re working with growers to get their GAP certification so they can be ahead of the game. We’re thinking by the end of this year, we need to have it for sure.”

Morris said right now, there are six farms statewide that are GAP certified. If their work goes as planned, Carroll County could soon have 15 GAP certified farmers, more than doubling the state’s figures.

Worrell said because of Food City agreeing to buy a set amount of produce at a set price, he knows how much money he has coming in each year, and he can make the necessary preparations to make his farm GAP certified. He said Morris and Straw have been instrumental in helping him along in the process.

“If I know what we’ll be able to achieve with the crop and know how much money we’ll get back, we can look at spending that money to make it safer and make it GAP certified,” Worrell said. “Without those two men, I know I wouldn’t be anywhere close to be ready for this.”