Story and photos by Bruce Schultz The hemp business is coming to Louisiana in 2020. Growers, processors and retail sellers are gearing up for the coming year, even though none of the required licenses have been issued by state agencies. Industrial hemp is the same cannabis species grown for marijuana, but hemp is a different than marijuana. Industrial hemp can produce numerous essential oils such as the chemical compound called CBD (cannabidiol), and it must have less than 0.3% THC (Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the chemical compound in marijuana that provides the high. The 2018 farm bill removed hemp as a federally controlled drug and allowed for national production of the crop. The farm bill required the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create regulations for states and individual producers to follow. Other states have had industrial hemp production, such as New York, Kentucky and Florida by participating in a pilot program of the 2014 Farm Bill. Some states such as Colorado and Oregon also have programs where marijuana has been legalized. Louisiana is one of many states later to join the game. Licensing by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF) for companies to grow, haul or process hemp is required but no licenses have been issued yet. The LDAF expects to start issuing licenses in early 2020, and that will clear the way for Louisiana’s young hemp industry. The agency is hosting a series of meetings in December, and the LSU AgCenter held an informational meeting in November. In the meantime, several companies in Louisiana have been formed and they are ready to do business as soon as they get LDAF approval, but the Louisiana Department of Health and the state office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control are also requiring permits for processors and sellers. The ATC currently has 1,274 applicants, mostly retail sellers. Dr. Gerald Myers, a cotton breeder for the LSU AgCenter, has been assigned to grow industrial hemp and learn about its characteristics. He has 64 plants growing in the LSU AgCenter Plant Materials Center near the LSU Campus. “Nobody has grown hemp in Louisiana for decades.” He literally started learning about hemp from the ground up, consulting numerous published and online resources. He is growing the plants under a research exemption. Myers has so far obtained seed from plants grown in Kentucky, Washington, California and Colorado. He said the first thing he noticed in the growing process was the plants had low vigor and were slow to emerge from the soil. He said some of the seeds had a germination rate of less than 1% while others had 80% germination so sourcing from reputable suppliers is essential. Transplants or clones are more likely to be used for essential oil production but are more expensive. Myers said much of the hemp being grown is from genetics coming out of Canada and northern Europe, but those varieties aren’t likely to prosper in Louisiana conditions, he said. He would like to obtain varieties from Southeast Asia that are more likely to be suited for Louisiana. He said the plants prefer well-drained soil with a neutral pH, and the nutrient demand seems to favor nitrogen and potassium more than phosphorous. “If you fertilize it like corn, you’d probably be fairly close.” He’s also finding out that the plants are highly sensitive to photoperiods, the amount of time plants are in light and darkness. Shortening the amount of time plants are in sunlight speeds up the transition for plants to go into the reproductive phase to develop flowers, and it’s the flowers that contain the most CBD. But most growers want plants to put their energy into producing CBD, not seed, so pollination is undesirable. For that reason, male plants that produce pollen are not wanted near female plants being grown for CBD and must be removed by hand. Small leaf buds may be clipped to encourage the plant to produce more flowers. Plants for CBD are also grown at wide spacings and there are no labelled herbicides. All this tells Myers that hemp production for CBD on a large scale would be a labor-intensive endeavor. Licensing and testing fees under draft LDAF guidelines are likely to discourage mom and pop growers who might be thinking of growing just a few plants to make extra income. He said that production economics are being looked at by LSU AgCenter economists. Information on production, economics, pests and diseases is being made available on the LSU AgCenter website, www.lsuagcenter.com/industrialhemp. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that some farmers in other states are having difficulty selling their hemp crop because they failed to secure contracts beforehand, and prices have fallen considerably. The Food and Drug Administration recently warned 15 companies, none in Louisiana, about illegally selling CBD products in ways that violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The FDA also published a revised Consumer Update detailing safety concerns about CBD products more broadly. Based on the lack of scientific information supporting the safety of CBD in food, the FDA is also indicating today that it cannot conclude that CBD is generally recognized as safe (GRAS) among qualified experts for its use in human or animal food. In addition to the interest in essential oils such as CBD, industrial hemp has a multitude of uses. Myers said the fiber potential might have a better long-term potential with fiber being made into make textiles, nonwoven batting, bedding materials, paper and a building material called hempcrete. Myers said he will be working with Dr. Steve Harrison, an LSU AgCenter wheat breeder, to study the plant, and to develop varieties suitable for Louisiana. In 2020, Myers will grow hemp in field trials near the main campus and at a location in north Louisiana. He expects the LSU AgCenter will hold hemp field days in 2020. “On the national level, there is a coordinated research effort, and the LSU AgCenter will be cooperating in that.” Meanwhile, several companies are eager get into the business. Sales of CBD products in Louisiana have been legal as of the 2019 Legislative session. One of those sellers, Kristy Hebert of Baton Rouge, who grew up on a cattle farm near Cutoff, got into the hemp business the hard way. She was walking along Nicholson Drive when she got hit by a drunk driver in 2012. The accident shattered her pelvis and she was in a wheelchair for a year while she learned to walk again at a rehab hospital. She was prescribed morphine for the pain, something she wanted to avoid. “I don’t even take Advil.” Hebert said she looked for a more holistic means of pain relief and found out about CBD that gave her pain relief, and it inspired her to change her major at LSU to biological engineering to work with hemp. She moved to Kentucky after graduation to work with the Hemp Research Foundation and the Kentucky Hemp Association. Eventually, Hebert decided to return home and start her company, Cypress Hemp,in 2017, selling CBD-based products and clothing made from hemp. One of the most popular products, a CBD oil, is taken in the form of a few drops under the tongue. She also sells encapsulated CBD, and lotions and salves. She also has shirts made from a hemp-cotton blend, and she said at one time hemp was a common material for making cloth. “Even the Mona Lisa is painted on hemp.” Hebert stresses that she is not a health-care practitioner, so she can only pass along what her customers tell her that CBD has done for them. She said many have told her they have gotten relief from pain as well as anxiety. Her products can be seen at the business website, www.cypresshemp.com. The website also has an extensive section that explains how CBD is obtained from plants, as well as the biology and chemistry of hemp and CBD. She said she grew hemp on an acre in Virginia in 2019. “It was a great success. The plants did real well.” But production from just one acre wasn’t enough for her needs, she had to buy hemp from other farmers. She plans to grow a hemp crop in Louisiana in 2020, after she gets her license, but she expects she’ll have to buy hemp from other farmers to meet the demand. She’s on a mission to educate the public about hemp’s benefits. “This is agriculture, just like strawberries or sugarcane.” She plans to have Cypress Hemp processed at Courier Labsin Houma. Courier Labsis investing $20 million in its facility. It is being constructed in the old Houma Courier newspaper building with 35,000 square feet, and an additional 20,000 square feet of space will be constructed there, according to Courier Labs partner Michael Thompson. His partner, Ben Nearn, said the company has been operating in Colorado with a hemp grower in the past few years, but chose Houma for its base because that’s where the primary shareholder is from and because the workforce there is familiar with the refinery technology that’s used for hemp processing. “It has a fantastically suited workforce from the petrochemical industry.” Nearn said the plant will have the capacity to produce 2,000 kilograms a month of hemp isolates, and that could be increased to 10,000 kilograms. They are fully aware that a large initial production surge could lead to severely depressed prices. Nearn said the facility could be ready for its first batch of hemp by the end of April. That’s assuming the regulatory hurdles have been cleared, he said. “We have a person who is employed exclusively for compliance and licensing.” In addition, Thompson said Courier Labs is in the process of obtaining its IS09000 and Good Manufacturing Process certifications. Chris Hansche is a partner in the Logansport company Bons Temps Growers. They plan to sell clones of hemp plants and provide advice for growers. “So we’ll be there for the entire growing season.” Hansche moved to Louisiana after working 8 years in the cannabis business in Washington state. He said 30,000 square feet of greenhouse space originally used to grow bedding plants is being modified to grow hemp plants, and two more greenhouses are being built. He said they will sell small and large plants, but he recommends the larger plants for first-time growers. Hansche said the company, once it obtains its license, will be able to provide plants now being grown in Tennessee and Arkansas. The first year will be a chance to determine which varieties grow best in Louisiana. He said Bon Temps Growers is pooling landowners, growers and financiers to get the industry started. “I really want to see it succeed in Louisiana.” A lack of processing facilities has been the key bottleneck in the industry nationwide, he said. “The most critical thing they didn’t think about is, ‘What do I do after it’s grown?’ “ He said the company has made connections with a processing company that will be based in Covington. Virgin Hemp Farms grew all of its first crop in Utah this year, but much of its 2020 crop will be in grown in Louisiana, said Blaine Jennings, a partner in the company based in Lafayette. He said the first crop was grown in Utah because they were able to obtain a license there from the state government. He said they have three greenhouses to start plants, and they will have 27 acres near Kinder for growing plants to maturity, in addition to continuing the Utah fields. Raised beds with plastic mulch and drip-line irrigation will be used, he said. Also, they will use greenhouses to cultivate hemp flower specifically for smoking. Currently, smokable products cannot be bought in Louisiana. But Dr. Mike Strain, LDAF commissioner, said a recent federal court decision could prevent states from outlawing smokable CBD products, and that would lift the state ban. Jennings is aware of that court decision in Indiana, and he’s following it closely. Jennings said the company also plans to build a processing facility with an industrial dryer. Once a license is obtained, the company can plant seeds, but he said if licenses are issued as early as January, it will put seed growers on a tight timeline to produce seeds in time for planting in June. Plants grown for seed in greenhouses require restricted light close to maturity to simulate shortening day lengths that occur in the fall, he said. Jennings said the specter of marijuana persists when CBD products are discussed. “There’s nothing of evil value to it. Hopefully that stigma will go away very soon.” If a hemp crop grown for CBD contains more than .3 percent THC, the crop must be destroyed. Jennings said the amount of THC increases in hemp plants that are stressed, but the level can be reduced with an increased dose of nitrogen fertilizer. But Jennings said variety selection can reduce the likelihood of excessive THC by careful selection of cultivars with low THC levels. He said even though CBD plants have not been grown legally in Louisiana, it’s possible to choose varieties grown successfully in similar climates around the world. But varieties grown in hot, humid areas of inland Oregon should perform well, he said. Hemp prefers dry, arid climate, he said, but so does cotton and it grows well in Louisiana. But he said hemp requires soil that drains well, and that could eliminate clay soils found in rice fields and many areas where sugarcane is grown. Jennings said anyone who wants to grow the crop should start small. “We’re not going to recommend going out of the starting blocks with 200 acres.” He said the recent informational meeting held by the LSU AgCenter in November was beneficial for the start-up company. “We had a really good reception at the meeting.” Jennings’ partner has a Lafayette-based company, Aromatic Infusions, that sells CBD products and essential oils. Robert Dupont of Dupont Nursery, based in Plaquemine, hopes to start selling clones, or cuttings, from hemp plants. The nursery was established in 1975, and it has specialized in hibiscus plants from its own breeding program. Like others getting into the hemp business, Dupont is waiting for a license from LDAF, and he expects that could happen in January. “Until then, we can’t touch a seed.” But he’s also eager for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to write its final rules for testing hemp that could provide growers with leeway for THC content. Without that rule alteration, he said, growers will be forced to harvest their plants early to avoid excess THC. “You get above .3% THC and you’re busted.” But Dupont said it appears that plants that produce CBG, a compound like CBD but with more therapeutic characteristics, could potentially be more profitable than CBD. Dupont said plant genetics will be crucial to growing hemp successfully in Louisiana. “We searched this country to find good genetics in the same latitude we are in.” He said the Hemp Mine in South Carolina has developed good southern varieties that withstand humidity, with lodging resistance. He said the company’s varieties appear to grow well in clay loam soils. Danny Dupont of Plaquemine, brother of Robert Dupont, has the Z-Top Greenhouse Co. He said growing hemp in a greenhouse provides control of moisture and insects. He said his greenhouse design features a filtered system that won’t clog. “It’s going to fit well with hemp.” He said he has seen hemp plants that were stressed after a rainy spell. “These times when we get a week of rain, the plants are going to struggle. The roots don’t like to be wet.” The LDAF is hosting free orientation meetings for cultivating, processing and transporting industrial hemp in Louisiana. “Anyone interested in obtaining a license to cultivate, process or transport industrial hemp in Louisiana is encouraged to attend,” said LDAF Commissioner Mike Strain. Topics of discussion will include licensing requirements through the LDAF, seed acquisition, cultivation and processing, as well as transportation regulations. Registration is required. For details on how to register, go to the LDAF website at www.ldaf.la.gov, click on “Industrial Hemp” and a link to register is located under “Louisiana Industrial Hemp Regulatory Orientation.”
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Story and photos by Bruce Schultz BRANCH – If life gives you lemons, make lemonade, so the saying goes. Mike Fruge has made his own version of that saying, using rice to make vodka. (Lots of rice farmers would say this year’s crop has been a big lemon.)
Fruge said it was the pattern of year-after-year of low returns on rice farming that led him to look at an alternative way to make money from growing rice. “I’m actually trying to build a family business and brand so we can keep farming.” His 80-proof rice vodka, labeled J.T. Meleck, has been on store shelves in south Louisiana for a year, and he has a warehouse full of bourbon also made with rice that is currently aging. He admits he had a lot to learn about making spirits. “I didn’t know the first thing about it.” So, he set out to see if he could make vodka from rice. He read all he could find, then attended a craft distillers convention in Baltimore and made a few contacts. “I asked a lot of people a lot of questions.” Finally, someone at the event advised him to make 100 cases of vodka and to see if it would sell. Rice is a natural for making liquor. “You can make alcohol from any starch,” Fruge said. “If you want it to taste good is where the trick comes in. I’m not a vodka expert, but I know what I like.” The process is simple. The grain and other ingredients are cooked, then fermented, and finally distilled. Fruge is tight-lipped about the exact details of his process. “I’m very protective of the recipes. I had an idea of what would work. I tried it out, and I was right. We leave just a hint of the rice smell.” He doesn’t want to say what rice variety he uses, or whether long-, medium- or short-grain is used. He said the distillery needs about 70 acres of rice currently, but that could change. “If we are successful, we’ll need other farmers to grow it.” His brother, Mark, oversees the family’s 4,000-acre rice crop. “He plants and he grows it, and he manages it.” Jeremy Hebert, LSU AgCenter county agent in Acadia Parish, said he enjoys working with Mark. “He’s a very good farmer. I deal with Mark quite a bit and he’s always open to suggestions and follows LSU AgCenter recommendations.” Hebert, who has made a few batches of whiskey himself, said the Fruge brothers are trying to get as much out of rice production as they can. “I’m eager to try some of their product. They’re tapping into a unique product that’s going to find a new market for rice. Not on a large scale, but a niche market.” Mark readily admits that the farm’s 2019 rice crop, like most others, was under par. He grows a second crop of rice but it’s intended for crawfish, not for the grain. Traps have already been placed in the dry fields in anticipation of flooding. Fruge crawfish are sold live and whole boiled. Orders can be placed by phone or online at www.cajuncrawfish.com. They also sell turduckens, stuffed chickens and other Cajun foods. Fruge said he enjoys creating and building a business. “I’m a serial entrepreneur.” Fruge has been in the seafood distribution business for 30 years, so he knows how to sell a product. In one way, selling liquor is easier because unlike seafood, it has a long shelf life. He has a clear analogy of what it’s like to sell fish: “Somebody sells you a lit stick of dynamite and you’ve got to sell it before it explodes.” He said he has a 4-day window to sell fish, and he’s often had no choice but to discard product that is too old. Fruge Seafood buys salmon and tuna from Alaska, Chile and the Netherlands, for distribution to consumers, mostly restaurants, throughout the U.S. Mike has the distribution part of the business in Dallas, with the sales force based in Branch. It all started when he thought he could haul a truckload of crawfish to Texas to make more money than he could by selling to local distributors who would double their money trucking their product to Houston. “I thought if you can double your money in Houston, you can triple your money going to Dallas.” He quickly found out that most Texans that far north didn’t even know what a crawfish was, much less how to cook or eat one. But his efforts revealed to him that a seafood distribution of fresh fish for restaurants could be viable. And he could sell the family farm’s crawfish as Texans’ appetites for crawfish developed. For several years, he divided his time between Dallas and Branch, and admits the travel, being away from home and the intense work almost got the better of him. But Fruge managed to assemble a good team for the seafood business. “The seafood company is the major cash flow tool that allows me to experiment with rice distillation.” He made a considerable investment in a 7,000-square foot building to make the product. The building houses a new cooker, called a mash tun, and a modern still that he’s yet to test. (He doesn’t allow photos to be made of the still because he doesn’t want competitors to know what he will be using.) Six 10,000-gallon fermenting tanks will be in place soon, and a custom-made boiler has been installed to generate food-grade steam for the cooker and distilling unit. Fruge has plans to build a tasting room in Branch, as well as a larger storage area for bourbon. But at this point he’s not sure if Fruge Spirits will produce mostly bourbon or vodka. Before he made vodka, Fruge started by making bourbon and he thinks he has a unique angle in the craft spirits market. “Nobody is making rice whiskey.” To be sold as bourbon under federal law, it must be made from more than 51 percent corn in the grain recipe. While some distillers also use rye or malt, Fruge uses rice with the corn. After bourbon is distilled, it must be aged in white oak barrels that by federal law can only be used for one batch. Used barrels can be used by the Tabasco company to age pepper mash or by Scottish distillers to make scotch whiskey. The barrels are charred on the inside, and that’s what gives the whiskey its tawny color. Fruge said tannin in the oak also imparts a smoky flavor to the bourbon. The barrels filled with whiskey have been stored for three years in an uninsulated storage area. “We want as much heat on these barrels as possible.” He explained that during hot weather, the bourbon seeps into the wood where it absorbs flavor. In cold weather, the whiskey leaches out of the wood, drawing out the flavor and aroma. During the 3-year aging period, he’s yet to taste it. He plans to open a barrel in October to sample it, and then he’ll decide if the bourbon is a saleable product. Fruge hasn’t settled on a name for the bourbon or a bottle design. He also isn’t sure when it will be available for sale. “I really don’t have good answer to that. When it’s ready, it will be ready, just like gumbo.” He stressed that patience is key to making good bourbon. “You’ve got to sit on it to see what you’re going to get. Good bourbon is 4 years old, and the best is 8 to 12 years old.” In the meantime, vodka can be distilled and bottled in a month. He’s kept distribution of the vodka within Louisiana so far, and the vodka can be found in several stores including Rouse’s grocery. The vodka bottle has a distinct tapered shape. The label details the J.T. Meleck story and the logo includes several Louisiana icons, such as crawfish and rice. His wife, Courtney, came up with the design. “I’m trying to be a niche Louisiana product. Anybody can make the stuff, but can you sell it? Can you create a following?” Fruge has a good angle for his first product. The vodka is named after His great, great uncle J.T. Meleck, who came to Louisiana in the 1870s from Indiana and started farming. The Fruge brothers still farm on land that’ been in the family since 1896. ' Fruge said it was his grandfather, Rufus Fruge, who taught him about farming, and had him on a tractor before he was 10. What would his grandfather think of the liquor-making endeavor? “My grandfather was extremely hard to please. I think at some level, he would have to be proud, but he wouldn’t admit it. He was old school.” “I can hear him now, ‘Fella, you sure you know what you’re doing?’ and I would say, ‘No, but I’m doing my best.’ “ Story and photos by Bruce Schultz VICK – The Williams brothers farm in Avoyelles Parish is a long ways from anywhere, and you probably won’t pass by it on your way to another destination.
The state highway that leads to their place is as twisty as the story of how the Williams family came to the area on the north side of the Red River. Scott and Alan’s father, Doyle Williams, originally farmed in northeast Arkansas, near Rector, Arkansas, located west of the Missouri boot-heel. “Cotton was the bread and butter back in the day,” said Alan, who is 18 years older than Scott. He recalls picking cotton by hand in Arkansas, pulling a long sack through the rows alongside his mother. “I was 12 years old picking by hand, and my dad came and got me and put me in a picker. Dad bought a single-row picker in 1959.” Back in those days, cotton harvest was a drawn-out endeavor, Alan explained. A field had to be harvested twice, because farmers didn’t have ripening chemicals to force bolls to mature all at once. In comparison, corn – now the biggest crop on the Williams farm – is a much simpler crop than cotton, Alan said. “I haven’t shredded a corn crop yet.” Their father grew cotton in Arkansas in the era of the boll weevil. High-boy spray rigs worked 7 days a week to spray methyl parathion. When the plants were at full height, the spray couldn’t penetrate through the foliage, leaving many weevils untouched, Alan said. “You’re not eliminating them, you’re just suppressing them.” When the Williams family was in Arkansas, farmland in Arkansas and Missouri became scarce and expensive as soybeans became the No. 1 crop in the Midwest, and farmers were competing for land to grow the new commodity. “When you’re poor, you don’t have cash to pay for land,” Alan explained. To make ends meet, their father sold Ford vehicles in the off-season for a man with money to invest in land. The boss had heard about cheap land in Louisiana, and he sent Doyle down south to investigate around Jonesville, Louisiana. Sure enough, there was land available but much of it was lush swampland that had to be cleared and drained. A man with land for sale had a supper where he made a pitch to sell farmland, and Doyle was convinced that was the place to go. Like pioneers, the family moved 452 miles south to hack out a living in a wild, untamed region. A D-8 Caterpillar dozer was used to move felled trees, and Alan recalls it was possible to walk across a new field by stepping from stump to stump. Workers hired in Jonesville wrestled the roots by hand from the soil. While the back-breaking work was tough, Alan recalled, making a homeplace in an isolated, strange land was even tougher. “It was hardest on the wives,” Alan recalled. “It was hardest on the women.” Alan recalls that their mother, Willodean, would wake them in the morning at 6 and breakfast would be ready, and often she would bring lunch to the fields, and then help pick cotton in Arkansas. After the Williams migration to Louisiana, more Arkansas farmers followed them along with some farmers from Missouri. After moving to Louisiana, Soybeans was the main crop, and the Williams wouldn’t try cotton again there until 1974. Alan and Scott, along with their sister, Beverly and Brenda, grew up on the farm. Both boys went away for school. Scott pitched baseball for Louisiana College where he graduated in 1989 with a degree in mathematical computing. “I knew I was coming back to the farm.” Alan also went to Louisiana College, playing basketball and graduated with a business degree. At one time, the brothers farmed 3,800 acres of cotton, but eventually they had to make a tough decision and make corn their dominant crop. Nematodes in the sandy soil hurt the cotton crop so much that it became less profitable. “We started raising corn as an alternative to cotton,” Scott said. “Rita is the one that got us,” Alan said, referring to the 2005 hurricane that slammed Louisiana as the most powerful Gulf of Mexico storm. The 2,200-acre crop flooded from 22 inches of rain, and seeds were sprouting in the bolls and they had no choice but to shred the entire crop. This year, they have 400 acres of cotton, and 3,000 acres of corn. Last year’s corn crop average about 175 bushels an acre. “We’ll have some fields go over 200,” Scott said. They expect to start harvest by the first week of August. “Usually around the second week of August is when we get into full swing,” Scott said. Most of the corn is fertilized with 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre, although some areas get 246 pounds. Scott said they run tissue samples on their fields to determine the nutrient demand. They irrigate about 90 percent of their corn crop using almost 30 miles of poly pipe. Coyotes are a problem with poly pipe because they rip holes in the plastic, Scott said. Repairs are made using 12-inch corrugated black plastic pipe. After a disastrous drought in 1998, they decided irrigation was essential if they wanted to continue farming. First, they leveled their fields. “We started with one tractor and one dirt buggy,” Alan said. They started planting corn this year on March 15 and ended 5 days later. Flooding has claimed about 100 acres of corn this year, but they know their flooding problem is minor compared to a neighbor who had 2,000 acres flooded near Larto Lake. And then there are their friends in the Morganza area who face the possibility of losing all their crops planted in the Atchafalaya Spillway. “When the Mississippi backs up, it causes problems for everybody,” Alan explained. They have managed to farm on a large scale by using local workers who have proven to be dependable. The brothers have eight full-time workers, and one has been with them for 33 years. “Most of our guys could work anywhere,” Scott said. “We employ our labor 12 months a year. We don’t ever lay them off.” Herbicide-resistant pigweed is their biggest weed problem. They use a pre-emerge herbicide for burndown, then follow the planter with glyphosate. Wild pigs also have been a problem, although a hired gun shot enough of them that they have moved elsewhere. The Williams’ 1,500-acre bean crop this year is all dicamba-resistant. A neighbor grew dicamba beans last year but the Williams didn’t and their soybeans experienced a minor dicamba drift. Scott said the damage was cosmetic but it was enough to convince them that they should go all dicamba in 2019. In 2018, they managed to harvest almost all of their 4,000-acre bean crop and 5,000 acres of a neighbor’s before last fall’s heavy rain that damaged much of Louisiana’s soybeans in the field. “We had 80 acres to cut after the rain,” Alan recalled. Scott is the fabricator who custom builds their equipment. He made a 90-foot hooded spray boom to handle mile-long rows of soybeans. It folds so it can be hauled around the farm easier, but it uses large amounts of liquid quickly. So larger tanks had to be used to increase the capacity but those tanks mounted with regular John Deere parts made it impossible to turn front dual wheels. So Scott made wing-like arms, using 7-inch, half-inch wall square pipe, that hold larger tanks above the wheels. “This way, we can leave the duals on year-round.” Alan said they had no choice but to learn to weld when they were kids. “There weren’t any machine shops around here.” Scott said when he was a boy their dad went to Sears and bought a welding machine and cutting torch and turned them loose with scrap metal. They will fabricate their own designs, or copy a piece of equipment. “When we copy something, it’s usually heavier than the original because out here, it takes some abuse,” Scott said. Their farm acreage is located in three parishes: Avoyelles, Concordia and Catahoula. Some of that land is 75 miles away by road, but 15 miles as the crow flies. So after years of driving the narrow, twisty road to the distant farm, they decided to use the crow’s route and they bought an ultralight airplane. Scott learned to fly the aircraft, the largest ultralight at that time with a 33-foot wingspan. It made scouting fields easier, and cut the commute time to the remote farm considerably. “I could land that thing on a turnrow,” Scott said. One day they took off and the engine missed. Then it quit. “It don’t take long to fall 200 feet,” Alan said. They were black and blue but suffered no lasting injuries, however Alan said that ended their aviation experience. “The board of directors met, and we quit flying.” But Alan isn’t ready to quit farming. “I’ve got to be doing something. I just love to plant a crop and watch it grow.” Justin Dufour, LSU AgCenter county agent in Avoyelles Parish, said enjoys working with the Williams. Dufour has held sessions to train their employees in the new worker protection standards. “They’re very active in staying up to date on new technology,” he said. Dufour said they have been eager to try new approaches such as cover crops. “They’re very open-minded to discuss things.” Story and photos by Bruce Schultz MORGANZA – Ask Matt or Marty Frey what kind of farmer they are, and they’ll have to look at their watch before they answer.
They could be in sugarcane, crawfish, rice, hay, cattle or soybeans, depending on what needs attention on Four Oaks Farm. And while they’re tending to the chores, Marty’s wife, Jodi, and Matt’s wife, Shawn, are back in the office, handling the voluminous paperwork. They are in the middle of a successful crawfish season. Six boats are used to harvest 1,200 acres. They currently use paddleboats, but Matt said he wants to find out about the practicality of airboats that some have started using to avoid rutting fields. Matt said the emphasis is placed on quality crawfish. “I want quality over anything.” Their motto is, “Our tails are heads above the rest.” To have adequate forage for crawfish, they don’t grow a second crop and often they will plant rice in late summer. They mostly sell to boiling operations in their area, although they have sold to Baton Rouge and New Roads restaurants. The 1,100 acres of crawfish ponds are within the Morganza Spillway, so they have to accept that those fields are susceptible to flooding, if the floodgates are opened at Morganza to relieve pressure on the Mississippi River. The last time that happened was in 2011, but five times since then the Mississippi River water level has almost gotten high enough to require opening the gates. “In 2011, this went under 10 or 11 feet of water,” Marty said while driving through a checkerboard of crawfish ponds. He was worried that the high water this year would require using the spillway again. It was only inches from reaching that critical level, he said. The brothers have another 1,500 acre farm, up the Mississippi River, called Blackhawk, and flooding is often a concern. "The last of April, it still had 300 acres underwater," Marty said. Crawfish provides a spring crop, but unlike crawfish operations to the south, the Freys’ crawfish don’t get to a marketable size until mid-February at the earliest. “We’ll fish until Memorial Day or first week in June,” Marty said. Then the presprouted rice will be flown onto the already flooded fields. Marty said Neally sprangletop is their biggest weed problem. “We use a lot of Command to try to stay ahead of it.” Dr. Eric Webster, LSU AgCenter weed scientist, says the weed Neally sprangletop is difficult to kill but it can be controlled with RiceStar HT. He said once the plant reaches maturity with a seed head, the plant is not growing and a herbicide doesn’t affect it much. They have been experimenting with row rice for the past 5 years, and this year they have a 50-acre field of it. The practice involves using poly pipe to irrigate enough to keep the ground wet, but not continuously flood, so no levees are required. The idea is to save on the costs of pumping and setting up levees. Hybrid rice is preferred because of its disease resistance, and the field is drill-seeded. They have used a computer program to determine the number, size and spacing of holes to punch in the poly pipe to get an even distribution of water across the field. One year, they grew a field of row rice that RiceTec used to produce hybrid seed. Wind created by the down draft of a helicopter was used to pollinate male-sterile rows with pollen from adjacent plants. The Freys’ rice is trucked to the Bunge elevator near Simmesport where it’s graded and loaded onto barges. They have a crew of migrant workers to work all the crops. “We’ve got some that have been with us for 20 years,” Marty said. That longevity pays off by having workers who know how to carry out all the work without lots of supervision, he said. One man has his three sons working with him, and most of the crew is related, Marty said. Wild pigs are a major problem. “They’re worst in the rice when it’s flowering or when you drain the fields,” Marty said. He said it’s not uncommon for pigs to destroy a half acre by trampling or rooting up the plants. And they damage cane fields too. “They’ll find the sweetest cane and cut it down.” Traps worked for a while, but they became ineffective after the hogs figured out the consequences of entering a trap. “We’ve got a guy who comes in and hunts them at night,” Marty said. Last year, the hunter shot more than 400 pigs, often eliminating 20 a night but that number dropped to 2 or 3, according to Marty. But one night in April, he shot 23 hogs and a coyote. Bears are often seen in the area, but they don’t cause much of crop problem, Marty said. In 1999 the farm started a transition from cotton to sugarcane. In all, they have 3,600 acres of sugarcane. They also no longer grow corn or wheat, and cane has taken over that land also. All their cane is hauled to Cora Texas mill in White Castle. Marty said they are finding that 8-foot rows are better for their operation than 6-foot rows because of improved efficiency. For sugarcane, Clean Tech seed is used, and they also grow seed for Clean Tech. Most of their cane is hand-planted, but they have one billet planter with plans to get another one. Marty said there is some evidence that billet planting increases yield. They still have a soldier harvester for seed to be hand planted. Last year’s tonnage was good, at 41 tons per acre, but the sugar declined from the 2017 crop. “It was an expensive harvest because of the rain,” Marty said. A dozer was required to keep the equipment out of the mud. “It pretty much ran all season.” The early freeze in November stunted the crop’s growth, and limited the amount of sugar, he said. “Fortunately, we didn’t leave any of the crop in the field.” Twin-row soybeans have been planted on 8-foot cane rows. Marty said he is trying the practice to see what advantages it has. “Last year, I didn’t see a difference in yield, but I do see a difference in stand.” They will have 2,500 acres of beans this year and much of that will get replanted in cane after soybeans are harvested. Marty has completed the Louisiana Master Farmer Program, and Matt has been through the Louisiana Master Cattleman Program twice. “It was way better than I could imagine.” He credited Vince Deshotel, LSU AgCenter regional livestock agent, for organizing a well-run program with experts in nutrition, health, genetics and pasture weed control. “Vince wants that program to be taken seriously. He wants people to learn.” Matt said he was so impressed with the program that he took it a second time, bringing his daughter, Taylor. The Frey farming effort began with Matt and Marty’s father, Frederick Joseph Frey, originally from the Mowata community of Acadia Parish. He moved to Lake Providence, Simmesport to work on farms owned by a large landowner, eventually settling in Morganza in the late 1960s to manage another farm. When the large landowner put up 700 acres of land in Morganza for sale, Frederick and Edwin Leonards of Crowley, who married Frederick’s sister, bought that property and formed F&L Planters. Frederick, who died last year, eventually retired and turned over Four Oaks Farm to his four sons. Today the operation is yet going through another transition, where Marty and Matt has recently bought out Mitch and Mark where they are branching out with their own enterprises. Marty said the small farm owned by their father and uncle shows what persistence and hard work can build. “It got us all where we are right now.” Story and photos by Bruce Shultz ABBEVILLE – If you want to find Allen McLain Jr., you’ll have to look in several places.
He might be checking on his rice crop, or he could be meeting with his crawfishermen. But then again, he could be on an excavator doing dirt work for his father, Allen McLain Sr., or there’s a good chance he’s boiling crawfish. He said the crawfish harvest was slow at first this year because of cold, cloudy weather. But warmer temperatures and sunshine in mid-March gave crawfish a boost. “It seems like every week, they just keep increasing in size. The Good Lord made us struggle for a while but we’re reaping the benefits now.” He said the invasive mollusk, the apple snail, has been found in large numbers in his fields, but they don’t seem to cause any problems, although a farmer in Acadia Parish reported last year that they were clogging his crawfish traps. “We’ve had them 3-4 years. It’s never gotten so bad where we had to leave fields.” McLain said he suspects the snails came from irrigation water pumped from the Vermilion River. What crawfish McLain doesn’t use for his boiling operation is sold to a wholesale buyer near his farm. He and his wife have a custom crawfish catering business, and they also boil crawfish for Shuck’s restaurant in Abbeville six nights a week. The catering business has out-of-state clientele. Once a year, they cook crawfish for an agricultural company in Colorado. They also boil crawfish for the Louisiana senators and representatives in Washington D.C. He said during a rice-related trip to Washington, a Mississippi congressman talked him into boiling crawfish on Capitol Hill, and the congressman liked the result. “He said, ‘OK, you’re coming back next year because this is the best crawfish we’ve ever had.’ “ They also boil crawfish for school fundraisers, and for neighborhood block parties. And if someone wants an ice chest full of boiled crawfish, he can do that too. He said word-of-mouth has been the best advertising for the boiling business. “I didn’t expect it to get this big.” McLain said he’s been approached to open drive-through boiling operations around Abbeville, but he doesn’t want to spread himself too thin. Mark Shirley, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant aquaculture agent, said many farmers are good at producing crawfish, but McLain has the drive and knack for selling his product. “Allen is not only a good producer of crawfish, but he’s good at marketing. He’s got a good businessman. With the help of his family and employees, they have developed a good chain of wholesaling and boiling. McLain uses front-wheel paddle boats for crawfish. “They leave the least amount of ruts, and they are easier to fix.” Allen has 850 acres of his own rice. Most of his rice is planted in CL111, but he also has some in Provisia. He also farms with his brother, John, and father, Allen and together they have about 2,300 acres. Last year, he had 300 acres of Provisia. The yield and milling quality were not as good as he expected, but he said much of that could be blamed on the weather. He said the Provisia technology’s ability to clean up red rice was good, however. “It cleaned up everything very well. The weed control is there.” He had finished planting by the end of March. McLain said his biggest problem in his rice crop is a weed known as Neally’s sprangletop. “You can spray it, and 2 weeks later here it comes.” He said plowing seems to be the best remedy to upset the hardy root system. Dr. Eric Webster, LSU AgCenter weed scientist, said Neally’s sprangletop is difficult to kill but it can be controlled with RiceStar HT. He said once the plant reaches maturity with a seed head, the plant is not growing, and a herbicide doesn’t affect it much. Dermacor seed treatment is used against weevils, McLain said. A second crop is grown on all of his rice. Rice, soybeans and crawfish are used in rotation on all fields. “We don’t plant anything back-to-back.” He left last year’s soybean crop in the field because of the bad weather at harvest and he can’t recall how many acres were abandoned. “I don’t even know. I try not to remember. It was a very good crop until it started raining.” Andrew Granger, LSU AgCenter county agent in Vermilion Parish, said McLain is active in farm organizations, and he’s president of the Vermilion Parish Rice Growers Association. “He’s kind of a model farmer.” Granger said McLain is progressive and willing to try new technologies. McLain and his wife, Erin, have two boys, Allen, 12, and Luke, 11, and a girl, Kaylee, age 8. They help boil crawfish. “Sometimes it’s the only chance we get to see each other,” Allen said. Erin, a nurse, works alongside Allen to boil crawfish, and occasionally he has to be somewhere else so the entire operation is up to her. They are also in the middle of building a new house. McLain said he started driving a tractor at a young age to help his father. He went to McNeese and majored in agriculture. While in school, he came home to help his dad with the rice crop, and to run crawfish traps. After school, he worked in construction as a heavy-equipment operator. Eventually, the urge took over to return home and farm. McLain completed the USA Rice Leadership Development class after he was chosen in 2016. He said what he learned from the class was invaluable. “It was a very good eye-opening experience to know there are people going through the same thing. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.” He said he found out there was a lot about the rice business he didn’t know, and he got to know the others in the class. “We still talk and text.” McLain has rice and crawfish on land owned by Johnny Boudreaux. “I’ve known that boy since he was in the first grade.” Boudreaux said his son Brett and McLain were classmates at Vermilion Catholic. “He was raised right. Good family values.” Story and photos by Bruce Schultz EUNICE – The 2019 crawfish season is underway, but it has begun with a below-average start.
“It’s slow right now. Normally we would be wide open, but we’re at half throttle,” said Doug Guillory of Riceland Crawfish, based in Eunice. “They’re waiting for that sun so they can come out of that growth spurt.” Mark Shirley, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant aquaculture specialist, said cold, cloudy weather is the main reason the catch has been off so far. “A lack of sunshine days during December and January delayed the crawfish molting and growing, and general activity,” he said. “We just need spring-time weather with milder weather. Until the water and the mud on the bottom warms up, it’s going to stay slow.” When the water temperature reaches 65-70 degrees, the catch should increase, he said. Shirley said the catch is down throughout the crawfish-producing area. “All parishes have the same problem, so we can conclude the weather is probably affecting everyone. There’s sufficient demand for the amount of crawfish available.” He said production will probably catch up in late March and April, probably extending into May. High water in the Mississippi River will probably maintain high water that could lead to a good catch in the Atchafalaya Basin, he said. Dexter Guillory, Doug’s father, recalls a comparable slow start to a season back in 2000 when the industry was rocked by the use of the ICON pesticide. “The whole year did not get any better than this.” But Dexter said he’s not worried. “The season is early.” Dexter has more than 30 years of experience to rely upon for his prognostication. He began fishing on 50 acres of family property in the late 1970s when he was a butcher at Winn Dixie, then he started Riceland Crawfish in 1984 and opened the plant in the middle of Eunice. In the early 1990s, the company started processing alligator meat in a separate facility. “We’re pretty much in every state with the crawfish and alligator,” Doug said. The company is a major player in the live crawfish market, buying from area farmers and selling to restaurants locally and out of state. Riceland also sends its 15 trucks loaded with frozen crawfish and gator meat to cold storage facilities in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami and Massachusetts. Food service companies and restaurants around the U.S. then place their orders and take delivery there. The frozen storage facilities never own the product, but they store it for distribution. Doug’s sister, Holly, is in charge of selling the company’s frozen products. She started working with her brother and father 4 years ago after working for 15 years for the food company Sysco. Before that, she worked in restaurants, starting as a waitress, so she knows the food business from all levels. “I sell our finished products, or as Dad calls it the value-added products.” Holly has to perform the balancing act of making sure the distribution warehouses around the U.S. have enough of Riceland’s products to meet orders, yet avoid overstocking. When she is trying to get restaurants to buy alligator and crawfish, she can recommend recipes. Holly said the company has plans of starting to sell overseas. “We have every intention to expand into the European market.” The small crawfish catch so far has affected supply, she said. “This is the first time that I ever knew about that we’re short on supply.” She said her work often requires visiting buyers across the U.S., as well as attending trade shows. In addition to frozen tail meat, Riceland sells whole-boiled crawfish. Dexter began selling that product in the early 1990s, but China took over the market with a cheaper product, but with inferior quality too. Buyers wanted a U.S. product. “Seven or eight years ago, we started getting back into it,” Doug said. “It’s really grown in the past 2 or 3 years.” Now the company has a brand new 30,000-square-foot facility east of Eunice designed for the frozen boiled part of the business. It’s located beside a new 50,000 square-foot cold storage, Sub-Zero Storage, to store Riceland products, and for other companies to rent freezer space. Dexter said the reason for the expansion was just simple economics. “We developed a good client base, and we have opportunity for more volume.” The new whole boiled operation is about to start up, but an automatic packing machine has yet to be delivered. They hope to be operational by late March. “We’re pretty much down to the clean-up steps.” The new facility has three blast freezers to freeze the boiled crawfish before it is shipped in 3- and 5-pound bags. Consumers can heat up the whole crawfish in boiling water, or in a microwave oven. Of course, they can be thawed and eaten cold too. Doug said a critical taste testing would probably reveal differences in the frozen boiled and fresh boiled crawfish, but consumers are giving it favorable reviews. “We get phone calls and emails all over from people who appreciate having it.” Mark Shirley said he tried the whole-boiled product, and he was impressed. “If you close your eyes, you’d swear you’re eating fresh boiled crawfish. It tasted very good.” Dexter said the seasoning for the frozen boiled crawfish is adjusted for more sensitive palates outside Louisiana. “We don’t go overboard with seasoning. You can always add, but you can’t take away.” The business has been dedicating mornings to process tail meat at the plant in Eunice, then using afternoons for whole-boiled product, but the expansion will allow a full day for both processes. Live crawfish prices are too high for Riceland to start its boiling and freezing operation, Dexter said. Once the price drops, the whole-boiled processing will start up. Dexter said the whole-boiled market is helping farmers by absorbing the product and helping bring some stability to the market. Demand for alligator meat increased about 5-7 years ago, Doug recalled. “It’s been flat since then.” The company sells tenderized alligator filets, alligator legs and breaded nuggets. Last year, Louisiana harvested 415,000 farm-raised alligators, a record number, according to Shirley. Non-wild alligator meat is more consistent in flavor and texture, he said. The company also sells crawfish traps, and materials for making traps, in addition to bait and sacks. A full list of the company’s offerings and crawfish recipes can be viewed at its website, www.ricelandcrawfish.com. Some of the Riceland’s employees have been working for Riceland for more than 20 years, and many of the workers are foreign. When the business is in full operation, it will have 250 people on the payroll. Dexter said owning one of the largest businesses in Eunice is stressful, but he enjoys the work: “I like the job. You have to make a profit but you have to like working with customers. That’s the fun part.” Fisheries agent Shirley said many crawfish businesses have failed, but Riceland has succeeded because of Dexter’s vision. “He’s one of the progressive figures in the crawfish and alligator meat industry. He’s a fair, honest broker, and he’s made good decisions along the way.” Dwight Landreneau, retired LSU AgCenter associate vice chancellor, said he recalls from his days as a county agent when Dexter sold live crawfish out of the back of a pickup. “He’s an innovator when it comes to crawfish. He had a vision and he’s not afraid to take chances for improvements.” “We’ve always been progressive, and that has pushed us in a positive way,” Dexter said. Landreneau, who does quality control work for the company, said Riceland has succeeded because of the positive relationship the company developed with the buying public, and because of its emphasis on quality. He said Riceland is one of three crawfish distributors in Louisiana that has the Safe Quality Food certification. Holly said several of the company’s long-time employees have helped with Riceland’s success. “Dad, Doug and I could not do it by ourselves. Our team is very important within the facility. Without them, we couldn’t do it.” Dexter said he just turned 68, and he realizes his children will be taking over the business. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. There’s nothing more beautiful than family working together.” Story and photos by Bruce Schultz ABBEVILLE - When Joel Gooch retired from four decades of practicing law, he went from the courtroom to his family homeplace in Vermilion Parish. “It’s so peaceful and quiet out here.” Gone were the rancor and conflict from fighting opposing counsel, along with the stress of managing a civil defense caseload. He went from deposing witnesses, filing motions and picking juries to picking bulls, vaccinating cows and mending fences. With the legal work behind him, he finds a satisfaction working with cattle. “I can just look out at them and find it rewarding. Watching calves nursing from their mothers is gratifying.” Joel said he is retired from practicing law, but not from work. “There’s always something that needs fixing. I traded an inside job for an outside job.” His new work is different from litigation, but he sees some similarities. “One distinction I would make is this is less stressful than being a litigator. There’s something about working in nature that is very calming. Forty years of practicing law was cerebral work. This is more of a physical and manual job but it still requires a lot of thought.” But he said nature can be an adversary as it was this fall when it stayed too wet to cut hay. “This is the first year I’ve had none. Last year, I had to buy hay for the first time.” Joel said he has booked hay for this year to make sure he will have a supply in case the weather prevents cutting again. In winter, he supplements grass with feed and ranch cubes, but he doesn’t use hormones. He said he doesn’t miss working in the legal field, but he misses the people in the business. “But I don’t miss the stress of it.” Joel’s advice to anyone entering the law practice is simple: “Take care of your law practice and it will take care of you. Return phone calls within 24 hours. Always be prepared.” And for new cattle owners: “Be prepared to get dirty, wet and cold. Realize it’s not the safest thing, and you have to be careful. You have to be nurturing and you’ve got to be prepared to do some doctoring.” Joel lost one cow that ate lantana, a fast-growing flower that’s often found in landscaping. He thought he had killed the stand of invasive species, but even after treatment with a herbicide, the roots can survive and spread. Joel said he attempts to make sure he is buying gentle stock, since he works his cattle alone, and he invested in a good squeeze chute so he could handle his animals safely. Most of his calves are sold at the Dominique stockyard in Opelousas, and he sells when the get to 350-425 pounds. Currently, he has three late-season calves. About 70 acres is in pasture and the rest is used in a rice-crawfish rotation. Crawfish production has been slow this year, he said, but for some reason his fields have produced more than some of his neighbors’ fields. The farm’s name is The Grove because of the pecan and oak groves, and it’s located on Grove Road. “It was just a logical name for the place.” The first Gooches came to the American colonies from England, and one of them, Sir William Gooch, was colonial governor of Virginia for more than 20 years. Gooch’s great grandfather came to Louisiana from Indian territory that would later become Oklahoma. Family lore has it that he was an eyewitness to a murder, and had to resettle after testifying at a trial. Gooch’s grandfather, John Ed Gooch, the oldest of nine children who made the move from Oklahoma, eventually bought land in Vermilion Parish for a farm in 1899. It’s the same farm where Joel has his cattle herd. He has built a barn and apartment on the site of the original homeplace. Cotton was first grown on the farm by Joel’s grandfather. “He transitioned to rice when it became an important commodity.” Joel’s grandfather went to work for the Acadia-Vermilion Rice Irrigation Co. as superintendent of the canal system that supplied farmers with water to flood their rice fields. Although his grandfather moved to Kaplan, he kept the farm and hired a man Nap Primeaux to tend to the property and work the land with a team of mules. The canal system no longer exists, but Joel leases a 6-acre strip of land adjacent to his farm where one of the canals was located. “My grandfather had a green thumb,” Joel said. “He planted most of the trees on this place.” Large oaks line the farm, and a grove of pecan trees runs through a large pasture. His grandfather enjoyed growing camellias, and often entered the annual shows at Blackham Coliseum. The elder Gooch also grew giant bamboo that was sold to the tuna fishing industry, but eventually demand for that commodity died out. The stand of bamboo persisted for years and provided a good windbreak for cattle, Joel said, but eventually it succumbed to a virus. Joel’s grandfather also had shorthorn cattle that he bought in Kansas. Even after John Ed died in 1956, the family maintained a cattle herd. “Dad bought a heifer for me from Dr. L.O. Clark in Lafayette. That was my first foray into cows.” Joel’s father, Dr. F.S. Gooch, taught botany at the Southwest Louisiana Institute, now University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Joel graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and he earned his law degree from Tulane in 1967. For almost 4 years, he worked as an FBI agent in Baltimore and New York, working on organized crime and labor racketeering cases. But he started looking at returning to Louisiana upon realizing he would have to work in New York City for 18 years before he could get transferred to another location. He returned to Lafayette, eventually starting the Allen and Gooch law firm in 1971. When he bought the 140-acre farm from his aunt and uncle, he started a farming relationship with George Sagrera Jr. of the Sagrera cattle family well known for their large cattle drives in the marsh southeast of Pecan Island at Cheniere Au Tigre. (Joel rode on one of those cattle drives, and he was pictured in an issue of Gulf Coast Cattle magazine one year.) George Sagrera wanted to start a herd on the Gooch place, but Joel said his role in the partnership would be minimal. “I had no time for it. The law is a jealous mistress.” In 2010, when Joel retired from his law practice, Sagrera decided he wanted to get out of the cattle business, and he sold five choice heifers to Joel. Sagrera, who also owns an agricultural flying service, handles the rice and crawfish operation on the farm. Joel said when he decided to raise cattle, he realized that he needed to learn some of the finer points of raising cattle, so he enrolled in a Texas A&M beef short course. “Eventually, I did the LSU AgCenter Master Cattleman program and that was even more helpful.” Gooch attends several LSU AgCenter field days to learn even more. Andrew Granger, LSU AgCenter county agent in Vermilion Parish, said he has watched Gooch progress as a cattle producer. “He attends most of our educational events.” Granger said it’s common for cattle producers to have an off-farm job or to be retired. Out of roughly 600 cattle producers in Vermilion Parish, 550 also are employed. In addition to Sagrera, Joel credits veteran cattle producers Calvin LeBouef and Johnny Boudreaux for help. Joel maintains 15 Braford heifers and a Beefmaster bull. Both breeds have some Brahma influence (or “ear”) that helps them endure Louisiana summers. His 5-year-old bull’s sire was named Bulletproof, so Joel – violating his rule of not naming cattle – had Bulletproof in mind when he named his own bull . “His name is Pistol, and he’s packing.” In addition to cattle, Joel has horses. “I’m one of those people who can’t explain why they keep large animals that can hurt you.” He keeps a quarter horse, Doc, he got from Sagrera at the farm, and he has horses at his home near Lafayette. He said he has an emotional bond with The Grove because of the family heritage and the peaceful environment. “My heart is tied up in it. My grandchildren love this place. They love spending time out here.” Joel recalled one day he was walking with grandson Ryan, who stopped in his tracks and asked, “What’s that noise?” It took Joel a moment to figure out what foreign sound the boy was hearing for the first time. “I realized it was the crickets.” Story and photos by Bruce Shultz BREAUX BRIDGE – Barbara Melancon looks back 25 years ago and she still wonders how she kept the Atlas Feed Mill going.
“It’s been a hard road,” Barbara confided. “It’s not been easy.” Her husband, Ronald “Boze” Melancon, had died of cancer, leaving her with three girls, ages 1, 3 and 4, and the business. “I didn’t know anything about a feed mill.” But she credits an area businessman, Jessie Smith from the business mentorship organization SCORE, for getting her on track. “He gave me the confidence I needed. I had what it took but I just didn’t know it.” After her husband died, she said, potential buyers were interested in purchasing Atlas, but she held out. “That’s all we had to make a living.” And Boze had asked her to try to keep the business going until their daughters finished school. She kept her promise and all three daughters graduated from college. An Atlas employee, Randy LeBlanc, was her right-hand man until he died, and then she had to learn what he knew. She learned one of the hardest parts of being a business owner when she had to fire an employee. “I always cry because it makes me sad. But every single person I’ve fired has always come back to say hello. They always know they’re welcome here.” The Atlas Feed Mill originally was a rice mill, started in 1949 by Sidney Melancon, her husband’s father. While Boze was a junior in engineering at LSU, his father called and asked him in 1952 to come home and help with the business. The rice mill was converted into a mill to mix livestock feed to be sold in the business’ store where a wide range of farm-related items are sold. The name Atlas was chosen because it would show up first in the phone book’s Yellow Pages. Fast forward to 1986. Barbara and Boze met at Mulate’s Restaurant (now Pont Breaux Cajun Restaurant). Boze could cut a rug on the dance floor, and so could Barbara, but Boze wanted more than just a dance partner. “I told him I can’t date you. You’re older than my daddy.” But later that changed when she saw him at La Poussiere dance hall in Breaux Bridge. “He was dancing with everybody but me. I guess I got jealous.” They married in were together 7 years and had three children before Boze died of cancer 3 months after the diagnosis. She gives her workers much of the credit for keeping the business afloat. “God sent me the best crew in the world. I have a crew that can’t be beat.” Several employees have worked at Atlas for more than 10 years. Operator David Noel has been there for 25 years, and manager Brandon Cormier has been with Atlas for over a decade, starting when he worked there in high school. But she said her customers also deserve credit for sticking with her through the years, even during the toughest times. She said the business suffered in 2010 after the BP oil spill. With the reduction in drilling, oilfield workers started cutting their expenses at home and many sold their animals which affected feed sales. After the flood of August 2016, many livestock owners reduced or eliminated their herds, and that also affected feed sales. Barbara also worried that the new competition in the area could put Atlas out of business. But she said she managed to compete with expertise and custom service. She maintained her poise, and adapted. She continued with the parts of her business that were working and she added new things. She started stocking materials for organic gardening and lawn care. As the demand for backyard chickens grew, she started selling those too. Now schools kids are brought to the store to see the birds. “You cannot imaging kids who’ve never seen a chicken.” She allows poultry owners to use the store for rooster shows, with owners coming from across the south to see who has the best looking birds. But the feed mill continued to be the backbone of the business. Fresh feed is critical for many livestock owners, she said, and that’s an advantage held by Atlas, and no preservatives are used in Atlas mixtures. The feed mill mixes grains and ingredients for several different animals including sheep, horses, cows, pigs, chickens, goats and deer. Customers can get custom-blended formulations for their livestock, and many owners of show animals insist that the mill keep their recipes secret. Samples of the standard Atlas feeds are on display for customers to inspect. Customers come from as far away as Shreveport, east Texas and Mississippi to buy feed. The feed is sold in hardware and farm supply stores across Louisiana, and she is working on a deal in Mississippi. She also is in the process of getting Atlas feed in Lowe’s stores. Hay has been in short supply this year, but she said the longest Atlas went without a supply was 4 days. In addition to the blended feed mixed by Atlas, the store also carries feed brands such as Purina, Nutrena and Lone Star. With crawfish season about to get in high gear, Atlas will be selling bait, and wire for making traps. Barbara relies on outside expertise. “We work real closely with our county agent,” Barbara said, talking about Stuart Gauthier, LSU AgCenter county agent in St. Martin Parish. “We love him to death. Stuart is great.” Atlas is a 4-H sponsor. She said Gauthier and his counterpart in Lafayette Parish, Stan Dutile, are major assets to the area’s agriculture community. “You call them, and they’re going to your farm or they’re going to look at your yard. I paid for all my workers to be in the Louisiana Master Cattleman Program with Stan.” She’s called in advisers who recommended doubling their greenhouse inventory. If a product bought at the store doesn’t work, she wants to know. “If you shop here, you’re looking for quality. If you’re going to put something on our shelves, it’s because it’s good.” Barbara has experts give presentations on a wide variety of subjects, such as canning fruits and vegetables, animal husbandry, soap making and gardening. At her daughters’ urgings, Atlas Feed Mill has a Facebook page, and she is amazed at the result. “I can’t tell you what it’s done for us.” And the younger people who look at Facebook come to the store. “I don’t know why people almost look at us like a tourist attraction.” She said it’s not uncommon for young people and city folks to visit the store with no intention of buying anything but to peruse the merchandise. For some older folks, it’s nostalgia. For younger people, or the millennials, it’s a glimpse at rural life. “I love it,” Barbara said. “I love to see people happy.” Barbara speaks French, and it’s often an asset to talk with older customers who might be more comfortable with French. “We still have people who come here who garden in their 90s.” Two of Barbara’s three daughters, Hailey and Kaitlyn, work with her. A third daughter, Marla, now lives in Georgia where she is a stay-at-home mom with her two young children. Youngest daughter Kaitlyn has worked at Atlas for a year after graduating from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in marketing and interning at Lafayette advertising agencies. “I like working the cash register because our customers are so great.” Kaitlyn said her mother taught her about treating customers as the No. 1 priority. “Mom has always raised us to be quality first and to accommodate customer and be the best you can.” She said the business’ reputation started by her father and continued by her mother has created a solid base of word-of-mouth referrals. “It’s the most solid form of marketing but it’s hard to measure.” Kaitlyn has started a sophisticated system of working with Google to fine-tune the sales system so Atlas Feed Mill shows up in the first hits of a Google search. “That’s all above my head,” Barbara admits. “I just sit there and feel lucky it works.” Kaitlyn said on every vacation, her mother has to include a side trip to a feed store to see how other similar businesses are operating. Barbara has bought land adjacent to the mill for possible expansion, and she said Hailey is insisting that the business might open another store between Lake Charles and Lafayette. Hailey worked in real estate in Texas for a few years, and she returned to Breaux Bridge to join the business. She saw how the business could be modernized. “I was very excited to put to use all the stuff I was learning in Texas.” The business now has a web page at https://atlasfeedmills.com/, and it’s on Facebook and Instagram. Hailey said her mother made it clear that her Dad never wanted to force his daughters to be a part of the business. “My Dad asked our Mom to always encourage us to do what we really were passionate about in life, and to allow us to find our own paths.” Hailey said she realizes the old-school business approach of customer service needed to be kept. “Our business is built on a family that supports each other.” She also realizes her mother is the central cog in the Atlas operation. “She does it all. She’s in every aspect of the business." Story and photos by Bruce Schultz JEANERETTE -- Like most sugarcane farmers, Bret Allain has faced an muddy, uphill battle this year getting his cane crop out of the field and to the mill.
“It’s been a real challenge with all the rain we’ve had. It never dried up.” Allain said if the weather stays dry for several days, he’ll move the harvest to fields with black, gumbo soil that needed time to dry up. “This year, I’ve run out of good ground.” He recalls an even wetter harvest in 1972 when he first started working in the fields with his dad, Robert Allain. “From the first to the last day, there was hardly a day without rain.” Tonnage is good this year, around 38 tons per acre, but sugar production is down, he said. Last year, the average sugar recovery was 225-228 pounds per acre for his farm. This year, he said, it’s about 209. Allain said he got lucky with planting. Of 1,100 acres, he managed to get seed in place on 990 acres. He said once harvest started, he had to go back to planting after a few days of dry weather “There are people who don’t have half their crop planted.” The cane harvest is expected to end sometime around Jan. 15-18, Allain said. That’s when the St. Mary Sugar Cooperative mill is expected to stop grinding for this season. Allain is president of the mill that was built by his grandfather, A.V. Allain who also was a St. Mary Parish Police juror. In 1994, the mill was expanded to a 15,000-ton capacity in a $34 million project. The St. Mary Sugar Coop has started its own harvest group. “We had to. Everyone else was doing it.” This year was not a good year for Allain’s 600-acre soybean crop. “I left 300 acres in the field. Crop insurance barely covered the cost of seed. And it was one of the best crops ever.” He said the yield potential was 60-70 bushels per acre but the beans were damaged by excess moisture, and harvesting the beans would have damaged fields and required more time and money to repair ruts. “I just had to watch it rot in the field.” Allain uses machines to plant sugarcane. He said it took four attempts at devising a planter that works reliably. “I’m pretty happy with these now.” The Allain operation has 10 local employees and 10 H2A workers. “I’ve got good people. I don’t have to hold their hands.” Allain has a partner, Bubba Gianfala. They started working together in 1996. This year, they are farming 5,000 acres, with more than 3,800 in sugarcane. Allain said good varieties are keeping farmers in business. He said the 299 variety is leading the pack but 283 and 540 are good stand-by varieties. He said new varieties such as 183 looks promising. ”Varieties are our lifeblood. That’s why I fight so hard for the LSU AgCenter. If we don’t have the varieties, we don’t have the sugar industry.” Allain swaps his farmer hat for legislator hat to fight for the LSU AgCenter. As a state senator for District 21, much of his constituency is agriculture related. The district includes all of St. Mary, and portions of Iberia, Lafourche, and Terrebonne parishes where sugarcane is the dominant crop. He said he wants to make sure the LSU AgCenter is fully funded, and that was a challenge during the Jindal years. “We’ve been able to keep it pretty well fully funded.” Allain said in the 2019 legislative session, he will fight again for agriculture again, particularly for maintaining funding for the AgCenter. “The AgCenter’s programs such as 4-H are important to a lot of people.” Dr. Bill Richardson, LSU vice president of agriculture, said he is appreciative of Allain’s support for the AgCenter. “Senator Allain is a champion for Louisiana agriculture, and supports the LSU AgCenter to protect our state funding.” He was first elected outright in 2011 to succeed former Sen. Butch Gautreaux of Morgan City. Next year, he will be able to run for his third and final term from 2020-2024. He has considered running for governor and it seems unlikely he would throw his hat in the ring, but he won’t flatly rule that out. “Never say never.” He said he has a good chance of being chosen for a leadership role such as senate president. “There are some things I want to do in the senate.” He said he has to fight for agriculture. He said an ongoing effort has to be made to maintain tax exemptions for agriculture spending on items such as seed, fertilizer, fuels and feed. No state has taxes on those expenses, he said, but the Louisiana legislature occasionally looks at that possibility to raise revenue. “Like I told them, if you tax those things, the price of food will go up.” And those most affected by food price increases would be the inner-city poor, he said. Allain said the plethora of special sessions in the past few years has not been good for his farming operations. “Two years ago, I wasn’t here like I should have been because of all the special sessions. It costs me money to be in Baton Rouge.” Allain said he was glad his measure passed to allow farmers to be on the roads with their tractors from sunrise to sunset instead of a half hour before sunrise and a half hour before sunset. One area that he wants to bring up for legislation eventually involves right to repair farm equipment. Tractor makers have proprietary computer systems in their machinery with secret source codes that prevent farmers from working on their own equipment. A technician has to come out to the farm at a rate of $150 an hour to determine why a combine or a tractor isn’t working and it might just involve changing a $10 part, Allain said. The issue has been taken up successfully by legislators in other states, he said, but not without a fight. “It’s becoming more and more of a significant issue,” said Jim Simon, director of the American Sugarcane League. “Not only is it an awkward inconvenience, it can be very costly.” Simon said he and Allain have discussed the issue recently. Simon and Allain were LSU classmates. “I’ve known Brett for almost 40 years. “He’s been a long-time advocate for agriculture, and sugarcane in particular. He’s always had a genuine interest in agriculture.” Having a senator who also farms is an asset, Simon acknowledged. “When you have someone who knows the trials and tribulations of farming, it adds to the authority.” He said Allain doesn’t shy away from speaking his mind, and a strong personality can be an asset in the legislature for getting a viewpoint across. “He’s been our go-to guy for protecting the funding for the LSU AgCenter.” Simon also said Allain is an effective member of the League’s Board of Directors. Allain and his wife, Kimberly, have two grandchildren, Flora and Marshall from their oldest daughter, Quinn, a physician in Mobile. Daughter Emma is an engineer for Exxon now earning her MBA at the University of Texas. Allain’s son, Robert Allain III, is working in the cane fields, currently growing his fifth crop. Robert is in a long family line of farmers dating back to the French immigrants of the 1700s when the Allains who were French Hugenots first came to Louisiana from Brittany. When Allain isn’t in the legislature or the cane fields, you might find him in his woodworking shop. He cuts tenons, mortises and dovetails in cypress and oak to make finely hand-crafted furniture. Currently, he’s work on tables for family members. He also enjoys saltwater fishing, using a camp near Cocodrie as a base to pursue speckled trout and yellowfin tuna. Allain, 60, said he doesn’t think much about retirement now. As a cane farmer, “I don’t know if any of us retire. My job right now is to help my son, like my father helped me and his father him him, gain the skills to be productive in this job.” Greg Brown, chief engineer at the mill David Thibodeaux, manager Chuck Rodriguez, asst. engineer Caldwell, purchasing agent Story and Photos by Bruce Schultz BATCHELOR – This year’s sugarcane crop has George LaCour excited, even though most of the harvest has been in muddy, sloppy conditions.
“Tonnage is exceptional,” he said. “The tonnage is way better than we figured.” All the LaCour Farm cane is trucked to the Alma mill near New Roads, about 40 trucks a day. The mill had projected it would grind 1.5 million tons of sugar but it has been bumped up to 1.8 million tons, George said. “We’ve raised our estimate of the crop five times this year.” He said this year’s crop has the potential to be another statewide record. “This crop is probably the best example of where research pays off,” he said. Other cane-producing countries around the world often have to rely on varieties that have been used for 30 years, he said. He said variety 299 is the farm’s main variety on the farm’s 2,300 acres of sugarcane. “That’s what made this crop. It doesn’t want to quit. I can’t say enough about the research done by the American Sugar Cane League and the LSU AgCenter.” Usually, he said, a variety’s yield decreases after the first year, but 299 doesn’t follow that trend. A good yield for second year stubble is 25 tons an acre, he said, but second year 299 has produced 40 tons. George’s farm manager, Tony Deville, said the 283 variety has been good. “But I think it’s starting to fade away.” The release of 183, with its mid-season maturity, will complement 299 well, Deville said. LaCour said half of his cane crop is irrigated because of anticipated periods of drought, and no rain means the crop will stop growing. “If it stops growing one month, I just lost 18 percent of my growth.” The sloppy fields make for an aggravating harvest, but George is more worried about the potential for a freeze. “Our concern right now is a freeze for the next month.” Once a crop freezes, it stops growing and it doesn’t produce any additional sugar, he said. George isn’t a one-man operation. In addition to his 20 employees working on harvests, his sister and daughters are partners in LaCour Farms. It was only 5 years ago that his daughter, Catherine LaCour Floyd, graduated from LSU with a bachelor’s degree in communications disorders. “I was not going to farm. I had planned to go to graduate school.” Originally, she had anticipated making a career in speech therapy. But she decided she’d try farming, even though she knew it could involve a lot of long days. “I thought I’d give it a chance, and I never left.” Her dad eagerly agreed to have her working on the farm. “He was more than happy. He said, ‘Let’s go. We need the help.’ “ She said her dad assigned her to start working in the office, joining George’s sister, Gertrude LaCour Hawkins, to handle the myriad details of paperwork. “If this office doesn’t function, nothing functions,” Gertrude added. Catherine said she didn’t have much background in agriculture except what she picked up as a child, and from her 4-H experiences showing animals. “I had to learn everything. Dad wanted me to start in the office and learn the business end first,” Catherine said. “I’m still mostly in the office but some days it’s easier to be in a tractor instead of crunching numbers.” Catherine said the work has been satisfying. “I like the challenge of it. Sometimes, it’s frustrating but there’s never a dull moment. You learn something new every day and it’s not boring.” She and her husband, Blake Floyd, a chemical sales rep originally from Houma, settled in New Roads. “I’m very happy we made the decision to stay here.” And now they have an addition with John Barrett, born Sept. 5. The pregnancy and birth kept Catherine off the farm for a few weeks, but she is ready to return. George said his daughter has become skilled at handling the migrant labor bureaucracy. “She’s the H2A queen. We couldn’t do what we do without labor. The labor issue is probably the biggest issue for us.” Finding local workers is difficult but it’s becoming a challenge to get foreign labor into the U.S., she said. The LaCour farm uses 28 foreign workers. “The Alma sugar mill could have opened a week ago, but they couldn’t get the labor to run the mill,” George said. He said sugar mill workers are allowed into the U.S. under the H2A seasonal agricultural labor program, but an effort is being made to place those workers under the H2B non-agricultural program. George said with the big cane crop, many growers are worried that their workers’ visas will expire before the harvest finishes in early January, and Catherine is spending much of her time to get visa extensions. Gertrude recognizes that working in a partnership with a sibling and a niece is not common. “You don’t have that too often in a sibling relationship. We look forward to seeing each other. George and I complement each other. Communication is critical to the whole thing.” She credited their mother, Nell, for setting them up to succeed. “She left us with some significant guidance.” “We like to say it’s a group effort. We communicate very well,” George said. “We just grew up with it. It’s in our blood and we love it. I don’t hunt, I don’t fish and I don’t play golf. It doesn’t get any better than playing in the dirt. If I’m not here, I want to be here.” Gertrude said the farm’s cane crop of 2,500 acres has been transitioning out of the older 540 variety, mostly replaced by 299 but they still grow 283, 804 and 183. “We have a good mixture.” They might get four years out of one planting, she said. “If it doesn’t have a good stand, we won’t keep it.” Grinding at the Alma mill started Sept. 25, and it’s expected to continue until the first of the year. “Alma is the No. 1 recovery mill in the state,” George said. The LaCour Farm crop portfolio is one of the most diverse in Louisiana with cotton, corn, wheat, soybeans, sugarcane and crawfish. They had harvests of cotton, sugarcane and soybeans going at once. This year’s cotton crop on the LaCour farm was increased to 800 acres, compared to 200 acres in 2017. All their cotton is sent to the Tri-Parish Gin at Lettsworth. George said this year’s cotton crop was good, producing 900 pounds per acre. But getting it out of the field with rainy weather was difficult. “I called it the harvest from hell.” Their corn crop was good. “It did better than we thought,” Catherine said. “Considering all the rain we had, and then no rain, it did better than we thought.” George said the corn yield averaged about 186 bushels an acre, and their 200 acres of wheat yielded 70 bushels an acre. George said high levels on the Mississippi River delayed planting of soybeans until June but that was a blessing in disguise because those beans weren’t ready to harvest until later, spreading out the bean harvest until better conditions prevailed. He said their 3,800-acre soybean crop yielded 50 barrels an acre, but much of it was cut when the beans were above 18 percent moisture and required lengthy drying time in the bins. He said he was able to harvest most of the crop before the heavy rains that damaged many farmers’ soybean crops and kept them out of the fields. George said he was able to sell his bean crop by early November. He estimates the tariff imposed by China on U.S. soybeans will cost the farm in the neighborhood of $350,000-400,000. The window for planting cane was narrow. The LaCour cane planting finished on a Friday at 2 p.m. the rains started 2 hours later. If the rain doesn’t stop, the silver lining is that crawfish ponds won’t require as much pumping. Thunderstorms knocked down field after field of cane in Pointe Coupee Parish. George said billet harvesters have to slow down by about a third of the normal speed to cut downed cane. The old soldier harvesters couldn’t handle downed cane, George said. Because of that, cane varieties were developed with an emphasis on lodging resistance, he said, but now cane breeding can emphasize yield more. He said the variety 804 appears to have a tendency to lodge. The LaCour farm is used by the American Sugar Cane League to test new lines of cane, and to grow seed cane. The wild hog factor determines where many of their crops are grown. “We’ve got some places where you can’t grow corn because of the hogs,” George explained. So those areas are used for cotton. They’ve tried various methods of controlling hogs, but they’ve basically decided to coexist with the pigs. “There’s not enough traps you can buy,” Catherine said. George was the chairman of the National Cotton Board last year, the only Louisiana cotton producer to serve in that position. The board works with an $82 million budget to increase demand for cotton, and to conduct research on cotton. U.S. cotton farmers pay a federally mandated check-off of $2.50 per bale. Serving as Cotton Board chairman required extensive travel. “I was gone 45 days last year for the Cotton Board,” he said. Travel included overseas destinations such as Vietnam and Hong Kong. He said overseas buyers like American cotton. “It’s high quality,” George explained. “We have a very good delivery system.” U.S. cotton is processed under U.S. Department of Agriculture standards. “They get what they buy when they buy U.S. cotton.” Because all U.S. cotton is picked by machine, it is cleaner than hand-picked cotton, he said. At 82 cents a pound, George said, cotton demand is high. “The Chinese have run out of cotton. He said it’s anticipated that the Chinese will buy 7.5 million bales of overseas cotton. China was the top cotton producer worldwide until the Chinese government placed more emphasis on growing food products. Now, India is the top producer followed by China and the U.S. Louisiana, where cotton was once king, has slipped to 200,000 acres this year. George said 25 years ago, Louisiana’s cotton acreage reached 1.2 million acres but it has been as low as 114,000. Changes in the farm bill led to a sharp decrease in Louisiana’s cotton acreage, he said, while prices for other commodities surged. George is discouraged that younger farmers seem to avoid the political arena. “That’s disturbing to see our next generation take so much of this for granted. They don’t want to be involved, but trust me, I don’t want to be involved. When the industry calls on someone, they need to answer.” He said he learned from Bob Soileau, with the LSU Leadership Program (George went through the program in 1991-92). He showed us the way. I’ve made more great friends in agriculture through the Leadership Program, Farm Bureau and the Sugar Cane League.” Story and Photos by Bruce Schultz FinLEBEAU – Joey Boudreaux and his Dad, Ike, were just two or three hours away from wrapping up their 2018 corn harvest.
“I was hoping to have a good day and finish,” Joey said. Then came a breakdown in their combine. Always something. But a glitch was preventing the combine header from lifting. It took 2 hours to find a short in a pesky wire to a solenoid, and that meant completing harvest wouldn’t be accomplished until the next morning. Joey and Ike were glad to put the year behind them. They were disappointed with the yield of 150-160 bushels an acre. “We ought to be cutting 200 bushels,” Joey said. “The past several years, we averaged 200-plus bushels.” Ike said the cold, wet spring interfered with the crop’s progress. “And it was so hot and dry during pollination, and it didn’t pollinate well.” Dan Fromme, LSU AgCenter state corn specialist, said the 2018 Louisiana corn crop will be average. Planting was delayed as growers waited for their fields to dry. (Planting at the Boudreaux farm started in March.) Then the crop got off to a late start due to wet weather. Once the crop had started growing, dry conditions were the norm for much of the state. The hot, dry weather had a negative effect on yields, especially on nonirrigated fields. “The rains didn’t come early enough for many growers,” Fromme said. “The date you planted also made a difference.” Dennis Burns, LSU AgCenter agriculture and natural resource agent in Catahoula, Concordia and Tensas parishes, said the weather may have also affected crop rotation schedules that could be responsible for some disappointing yields. “Some of it went in as corn-behind-corn when normally we’re in a corn-to-soybean or corn-to-cotton rotation,” Burns said. “This year with all the rains that came, and it being later, the fields that dried out first were perhaps corn in 2017 and went back to corn.” Burns also said that yields fluctuated from field to field. “Yields are anywhere from low and a little disappointing to really good. It doesn’t matter whether it’s irrigated or not. It just varies according to the field,” he said. From their observations of corn fields across the state, both Fromme and Burns expect the final harvest figures to be average and will certainly not be a bin-buster for Louisiana corn farmers. “I think it will be an overall average corn crop,” Burns said. “I think there’s been enough low-yielding areas to offset anything that has been above average.” According the LSU AgCenter Ag Summary, the five-year state average for corn yields is approximately 178 bushels per acre, which includes a record yield of 186 bushels set in 2013 and nearly matched last year. Joey said the yield probably would have been even lower if not for the improved corn genetics with improved drought resistance. But no corn hybrid has been developed with hog resistance. Large patches of downed corn show where the wild swine wreaked havoc on patches of the crop. Joey said a neighboring farmer killed more than 90 pigs this year. The Boudreaux farm only had 350 acres of corn this year. “We usually plant more but it was so cold and wet, we didn’t push it,” Joey said. With the price of corn falling, it’s probably a good thing they weren’t able to plant more back in March. “Right now, we’re just in a stage where profit margins are low,” Joey said. “I’m not planning on making any equipment upgrades unless I have to.” They planted 2,400 acres of soybeans, and so far the crop looks good. Joey said with the drop in price from the trade dispute with China, a good yield will be needed to make money. “You almost have to cut 45- or 50-bushel beans.” But he said their soybeans look good, with potential for high yields. He was pleased with the first day, harvested on Sept. 5 near Big Cane and yields ranged from 45 to 65 bushels. “I’d say it’s probably hanging in the mid-50s. I think the bean crop is going to be better than the corn crop.” By the second day, further into the 250-acre field, the yield had dropped to the mid-40s. “If we can cut 50-bushel beans, we’ll be all right, but with 40-bushel beans, we’ll be eating Vienna sausage spaghetti.” But he was at least relieved that Hurricane Gordon stayed away from south Louisiana, and the new draper header he had installed was working well. Joey and Ike are leasing bins from a neighbor so they have the flexibility of holding onto their crop to take advantage of better prices. “We never did have bins before. We were at the mercy of the weather and the elevators.” They sell most of their crop to Louis Dreyfus Co. on the Mississippi River in Port Allen and some to the Zen-Noh Grain Corp. at Convent, also on the river. Joey said farms with 5,000-10,000 acres could make a profit with 40-bushel soybean yields but small operations will barely get by. He couldn’t help but think back to the days when his father raised a family on an 800-acre farm. “Nothing really looks good right now except cotton and sugarcane,” Joey said. Cotton is risky, he said, and he’s not sure about getting started in sugarcane. Joey said his oldest girl, Emma, age 10 wants to be a farmer, but he’s not sure he will encourage her. “It’s stressful. There are so many things out of your control.” And the days of a slow-paced life on the farm are gone, he said. “It’s so fast-paced. Everything has to happen fast. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to teach our kids like when I was growing up. I started driving a tractor at 8 years old.” Joey said despite the challenges, he still enjoys farming. “You have a lot of freedom. You are your own boss. Of course, you’re probably harder on yourself if you’re the boss.” Ike insisted that Joey get a degree, even if he wanted to farm. “My dad was the same way,” Ike said. “You had to get some kind of degree.” Ike obtained a civil engineering degree, and he did survey work on the side that included the southern stretch of the construction of Interstate 49. In pursuit of the mandatory degree, Joey almost became Dr. Boudreaux, but an accident in 2009 changed all that. While deer hunting in the St. Landry Parish woods, his tree stand came loose when a pin holding one of two chains popped out. A safety strap held one of his legs and he was dangling in the air until he could grab a tree limb and take some of the pressure off his suspended leg. He hung by one leg for several hours, 30 feet in the air until he finally fell to the ground. If he hadn’t been able to use a cellphone to call Ike for help, it’s likely he would not have survived, but recovery from the severe back injury was a lengthy ordeal. His recuperation also hampered his work on a doctoral degree in weed science under Dr. Jim Griffin at LSU, so he opted to graduate in 2011 with a master’s degree instead of a doctorate. Joey said his graduate work involved a study of the use of Gramoxone, or paraquat, as a harvest aid on soybeans. He said the research was gratifying because it was an applied project that helped many farmers, especially sugarcane farmers who want to get their bean crop out early enough to allow sugarcane planting. “Our work showed you could use Gramoxone to dry beans down when it looked like they weren’t going to dry down.” Joey said he uses Gramoxone on every acre of his soybeans, and it helps in fields where some areas are late to mature after the rest of the crop is ready for harvest. “If you spray Gramoxone, you can get everything ready at the same time.” Joey said he studied all aspects of farming at LSU, with extensive learning about diseases and insects as well as weed science. “I tried to tailor my master’s degree as a well-rounded student.” Ike decided when Joey started working on the farm, it was time to turn the reins over to his son. “He’s the boss. I said, ‘You run the business. I’ve done it long enough.’ “ Joey talks with his dad about major financial decisions, but it’s Joey who decides the day-to-day issues like what varieties to grow and when to spray fungicides. “You can’t have two bosses. One person has to make all the decisions.” Ike, who started farming in 1973, has done more in his farming career than just work the fields. He has been active in the United Soybean Board, elected national chairman in 2008, and he served on the national Soybean Promotion Board. “Here’s a little farmer who becomes a chairman of a national organization. It was a very humbling experience.” In 2009, he chaired the Soybean Exporting Council that showed Chinese agriculture and trade officials how soybeans could be used for animal feed for poultry and hogs. “We worked with China probably 8 or 10 years.” He recalled a Chinese official advised them that just because a deal was signed, doesn’t mean trade will start immediately. “The negotiations begin after the contract is signed.” Ike said developing new markets such as China was made possible through the national soybean check-off program. “It’s amazing what the check-off has done.” He said the check-off board of directors had a goal of finding 2-3 new products each year that would use soybean oil. And it continues to benefit farmers, he said. The check-off program has been used to help develop a new product, Roof Maxx, a coating that can strengthen and extend the life of conventional asphalt shingles. Now soybeans with high oleic oil are being grown in the Midwest where processing plants have been built to extract the oil to be used for cooking, Ike said, and farmers are getting a 50-cent premium for growing those soybeans. “From what I’ve seen, it’s going to be a better oil. I think eventually, all soybeans will be high oleic.” Vince Deshotel, LSU AgCenter county agent in St. Landry Parish, said the Boudreauxs set a good example for the farming community. “They’re good farmers. They’ve grown their operation through the years with a lot of hard work.” He said Joey is active in the St. Landry Parish Farm Bureau chapter, and Ike’s work on the United Soybean Board has helped boost Louisiana’s status as an agricultural state. “They have found their place in the industry as far as being active.” Story by Bruce Schultz MIDLAND - Farming 10,000 acres sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but the Thibodeaux brothers and sons have it figured out.
They meet daily at 6:30 a.m. to plan their day and to decide who’s going to do what. The brothers are Randy, Dale and Steven. Randy’s son, Eric, and Dale’s son, Ross, also are partners in the Thibodeaux Ag Group. Just keeping up with the acreage is a major undertaking. Their meeting room looks like the headquarters for an army on the attack. Several large dry eraser boards are kept to record what has been done to each field, and to show work assignments. Notes are made on the board when anything is done on a field. Ross maintains a record on his computer. The Thibodeaux brothers started farming in 1980, and they moved their operation to the Midland area in 1983. Dale and Randy said they never imagined they would farm this much land, but the size is not out of the ordinary considering there are five partners. “An operation like this, you don’t just jump into it overnight,” Randy said. “Opportunity just came about and you don’t turn it down,” he said. “You’ve got to have almost a thousand acres of rice and other things to survive.” The Thibodeaux have 5,000 acres of rice this year and 3,300 acres of soybeans. They harvested crawfish on about 1,500 acres last year. Randy said the 2016 price was around $17 a barrel, the same as it was when they started farming, but now expenses are considerably more. “Your net profit per acre is less, so you have to have more land to make a living.” He said the farm grew in increments. “It was a gradual thing, so we worked into the growth.” They have cut back on acreage some years, he said, but they increased when Ross and Eric decided they wanted to farm. They still farm some of the land that their father farmed 60 years ago. The other land that they farm has been farmed by them for between 20 and 50 years. About 80 percent of their farming is in Acadia Parish and the rest in Vermilion. Dale is quick to credit their relationships with landlords for success, as well as their lender. “Our landowners and the First South Farm Credit have helped us along the way.” Dale said they personally check fields daily to monitor a crop’s progress and to maintain adequate water levels. “You have to do that. We are in the fields every day.” He said he also observes how a crop has performed when he’s running a combine. “You can see a lot by cutting a field.” Dale graduated with a business degree concentrating in accounting from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1978. He went to work for Amoco during the oil boom. “I just wanted to try something different.” But he was working night and day, and he realized he would have to move to Houston or Chicago if he continued his career with Amoco. “I figured if I have to work this much, I might as well go to work on the farm.” He’s always thinking about figures, so while he’s running a combine he often runs numbers in his head to figure out how to make the partnership a little more profitable. “You’ve got to figure out how much money you’re making per acre.” This year, the rice crop looks good so far. On a hybrid field, Ross said the combine yield monitor showed a range of 52-62 barrels an acre. “Yields so far look like they’re right up there with what we had in 2014, but not quite as good as 2013.” The Thibodeauxs use large carts, with each one hauling enough grain to fill half of a trailer. The Case combines are equipped with tracks to ease harvesting in muddy conditions and reduce the rutting factor. They sell their rice to Supreme Rice Mill. They have a 140,000 barrel drying capacity at their farm headquarters and an elevator at Midland. Ross said 85 percent of their rice is hybrids, and the remainder was planted in Provisia to address a red rice/weedy rice problem. Ross said the new technology was used in some of their worst fields, and it appeared to work well. He said it worked especially well in a 160-acre field that had a bad infestation. “It was our worst field, and there is not one weedy rice plant.” Provisia is maturing later than the hybrids by about 10 days, but LSU AgCenter rice breeder Adam Famoso said that was to be expected, and the next Provisia release will have an earlier maturity. Initial reports from other farmers growing Provisia have reported yields in the mid-40 barrels. Ross said the fields will be followed up with soybeans next year. Planting started March 15 and continued through mid-April. All their fields were drill-seeded. All rice seed was treated for insect control, Ross said. Insect and disease pressure was light this year, he said. Only one field had to be sprayed for stinkbugs. Their Case combines are outfitted with a Monsanto system that has a color-coded monitor showing yields as a field is cut. Ross can later compare the yield map to a map that showed nutrient levels from grid sampling every 3-4 years. Ross hopes that by Sept. 15, all rice will be cut in time to start on 3,300 acres of soybeans. After that crop is harvested, it will be time to start on second-crop rice, being grown on 90 percent of this year’s acreage. He said this year’s soybean crop appears to be a good one, so far. “As far as it looks right now, it’s one of the best soybean crops we’ve ever had, but with beans you can’t count on them until they are in the bin.” To keep up with a farm of this size, it’s essential that the Thibodeauxs hire good workers. They have 11 local men on the payroll, and some have worked for them as long as 30 years. Also, they have a dozen H2A workers and some have been working with the Thibodeauxs for more than 15 years. Dale said they learned from their father to hire workers to get everything done on time. That enabled him, Randy and Steve to play sports, but they would have to ride their bicycles 3 miles to Morse for baseball practice. And he said they also learned from their father to check water themselves. The Thibodeauxs have 32 pumps, with 55 percent powered by electricity and the rest by diesel. They use mostly surface water. They will have crawfish on about 1,800 acres in 2019, a slight increase from 2018. “Last year was an average year, nothing spectacular. Not as good as the year before,” Ross said. They have acquired a fleet of airboats for harvesting crawfish, eliminating the problem of ruts left by paddle boats that causes more dirt work. Jeremy Hebert, LSU AgCenter county agent in Acadia Parish, said he enjoys working with the Thibodeauxs. “They are excellent farmers. They are some of the most progressive farmers in the area,” Hebert said. “It seems like they are always on the forefront of the cutting edge of new technology.” “They take farming serious, and they don’t cut corners.” He said Ross is becoming more active in the rice industry, and he serves as secretary-treasurer of the Acadia Parish Rice Growers Association. “They’re supportive of the LSU AgCenter and always willing to help out.” Ross graduated from LSU with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2007. By age 10, Ross had started driving a tractor, and he was running a combine by his mid-teens. He said he wasn’t always sure he would be a farmer. “I liked it, but when I went to college I didn’t know for sure if I was going to farm.” Dale said he knew Ross wanted to be a farmer about mid-way through college. Ross is a graduate of the LSU Ag Leadership Program, and he is currently enrolled in the Rice Leadership Program. Ross said he enjoys farming because of the variety of work. “I enjoyed it more and more. I like the change. Every day is something different. You’re never doing the same thing two days in a row.” He said his favorite time is late spring after the crop is planted and it’s time to flood up. Ross, 34, and Eric, 24, are fourth generation farmers. There might be future farmers in the family lineage. Ross and his wife, Katie, have a 2-year-old boy, Thomas, and a girl is on the way. Eric and his wife, Cecilia, have a boy, William, and three girls. And Randy has a step-grandson Brayden who is 10. The Thibodeauxs can trace their ancestors to Nova Scotia, where they found the grave marker for Pierre Thibodeaux, their ninth great-grandfather who had a grist mill. More ancestors later migrated to Louisiana. Dale and his wife Joni ventured to Nova Scotia last year to see where their ancestors lived. How are decisions made among 5 partners? “We just talk about it, and then make a group decision.” Ross said they each have their specialties. His include precision agriculture, overseeing spray rig assignments and choosing rice and soybean varieties. Steven is the mechanic, doing most of the repair work on the equipment, but he also can be found in the field during the growing season. Randy is stationed at the dryer when loaded trucks arrive with harvested rice. Dale works the numbers, and he too will be in the field. Randy’s wife, Marlene, also helps Dale in the office to help keep the business going. Randy’s talent in the kitchen has reached a nationwide audience. The USA Rice staff connected him with the Sara Moulton cooking show, and a segment was videotaped that featured Randy cooking crawfish etouffe in 2016. Of course, the show also included a tour of the Thibodeaux rice and crawfish farm, and Moulton went for a ride in a crawfish boat. “It was all off the cuff,” Randy recalled. “There was no script.” The show wanted to feature Randy’s recipe, complete with the amounts for each ingredient. That was a problem, Randy said. “I’ve never measured anything in my life when it comes to cooking.” But the cooking show host needed the amounts for a recipe to post on her website. Randy’s recipe can be found at saramoulton.com/2016/04/randy-thibodeauxs-crawfish-etouffee. Moulton wanted that an extra set of ingredients be prepared for the shoot, and Randy said she explained that was a precaution just in case the first batch of etouffe turned out bad. But Randy insisted that wouldn’t be necessary. “I said, ‘Sarah, we don’t mess up.’ “ Story by Karl Wiggers and Neil Melancon DIXIE - Usually for Jacob and Kari Rumbaugh, each morning begins with a long list of daily chores on their farm in Dixie, La.
On June 22, however, they woke up in New Orleans as the 2018 winners of the Young Farmer and Rancher Achievement Award. The award was presented to them at the Louisiana Farm Bureau’s Organizational Awards during its annual convention. The Rumbaughs were chosen from a highly competitive field for their dedication to farming, family and Farm Bureau activities that exemplify Louisiana’s farming community. “We’re very honored to be selected among our peers to receive an award like this,” Jacob says. “I know how progressive other young farmers and ranchers are in our area, so it means a lot.” Not only do they manage 1,300 acres wheat, soybeans, corn and cattle pastures, but they ride herd on two young children as well, Ada and Reid. Kari says winning this award reinforces what they teach their children everyday on the farm. “The kids can see all of our hard work has come to fruition,” she said. “It makes the days that are hard worth it when this type of thing happens.” Having their children with them on the farm is an integral part of their success, both as farmers and parents, Jacob said. “Growing up we hoed cotton,” he said. “You get see the value of a dollar, you get to see the value of hard work. It really sets you up well for really any type of life. So with the kids, its the same way. They can see how hard we work.” Jacob may have grown up around farming, but went to college and became a civil engineer. He left a successful engineering partnership and transitioned to full-time farming in 2013. Kari is also a college graduate and puts her business degree to work for the farm every day, especially when it comes to their herd of 320 cattle. “Checking water, checking fences, checking for sick calves,” she said, listing off some of those daily chores involved with raising beef cattle. “I started keeping an electronic record of all of our calving.” The Rumbaughs got into farming in 2008 when their parents liquidated their cattle herd to help them start with what Jacob describes as a “clean slate.” Jacob’s father, George, said not only have they returned this investment, but their skills in engineering and business have helped the farm thrive. “Its pretty nice to have somebody that knows tech,” George Rumbaugh said. “When there’s a problem, I say, ‘Jacob!’ so that works real well. Now, we have the software and Jacob writes all the programs himself.” The Achievement Award recognizes not only the couple’s farm prowess, but their service to the community at large. Kari said it’s reflected in the way her kids see how important agriculture is in the world. “We actually sold some of our corn to Tyson, and the other day, my daughter and I were in Sam’s and she saw a big bag of Tyson chicken in the freezer and she got it out and she said, ‘Mom look, its Tyson chicken!” Kari said. “‘These chickens ate some of our corn.’ So that was really cool for me to know that she knew that and that she was proud that she had a part in that.” “There’s value in what we do,” Jacob added. “We’re feeding the world. There’s two percent of us out there now in the United States that feeds the rest of the country, and to me there’s a lot of value. Its just a sense of pride, a sense of hard work. You know, pride in what your doing.” As part of their prize package, the Rumbaugh’s will receive $35,000 courtesy of the Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company . In addition, they’ll come back to New Orleans in January of 2019 to compete for the American Farm Bureau YF&R Achievement Award. Story and photos by Bruce Shultz LAFAYETTE – The nonprofit Acadiana Food Hub is the germination of a seed that grew in Zach McMath’s fertile imagination.
On this Wednesday evening, he’s receiving orders for customers using Waitr, the online food delivery service, for locally grown fruit and vegetables. Waitr is usually for ordering online from restaurants, but McMath convinced the company to deliver produce as well. Farmers bring their product to the Food Hub’s location off University Avenue. When an order is placed, the items are bagged for Waitr drivers to pick up and deliver to customers. “The idea is to give farmers more markets.” Business isn’t brisk, with only a few orders trickling in, but McMath is ok with the low volume given that the service has only been available for 3 weeks. “It’s pretty slow, but it’s all about getting the word out. It’s a marketing game and a social media game. It’s really about people knowing we’re out there.” It’s only one of several endeavors being undertaken by the Acadiana Food Hub. His family has owned a vending machine business, M&M Sales, so he has a close familiarity with the food trade. He recalls the inspiration for starting the Food Hub came when he was making smoothies at the farmer’s market at the Horse Farm in Lafayette, now being converted into a park. He said one of his usual customers was then-Mayor Joey Durel, who remarked to him that Lafayette only had a two-day fresh food supply, and much of that food is trucked to Louisiana. That got McMath thinking that untapped opportunities exists that could be filled by local growers. The hub has several projects. It provides incubator kitchens for people with new food products to perfect their ideas. The Hub connects food growers with sellers, and it has persuaded a local agency, the Lafayette Economic Development Authority to award grants for individuals aiming at starting their own food businesses. David Page received one of the $5,000 LEDA grants and he is using it to start an oyster mushroom business, something that McMath said is missing from the local food market. “There’s nobody servicing this area.” Page has bought a shipping container that he plans to convert into a nursery. “I’m new to the agriculture world,” Page admits. “But I’d like to be the guy who can produce mushrooms steady, year-round. I think I’m stumbling across something I can base a career on.” Kerry Kennedy said the Food Hub facilities enabled him to get his Basin Blend non-salt seasoning product on the market. “I was making it at home and I couldn’t sell it.” Kennedy explained that food prep regulations require him to make his product in an approved commercial kitchen. Acadiana Food Hub came to the rescue with the approved kitchen for rent. “Having a commercial kitchen enabled me to make it in larger batches, and under the required regulations,” Kennedy said. Now his product is available throughout Lafayette at several groceries including Nunu, Fresh Pickin’s Produce and Little Veron’s. The website www.basinblend.com shows all sales outlets. John Hackney of Wing Fingers said the Food Hub’s commercial kitchen provided approved preparation space when the business started as a food truck serving spiced chicken wings and burgers. “There was no commercial kitchen in Lafayette for rent. They (Acadiana Food Hub) opened around the time we opened,” Hackney said. “We were their first customer. We wouldn’t have been able to run a food truck if it weren’t for them.” Wing Fingers has since become a fixed restaurant at 1043 Johnston St. in Lafayette. McMath wants to get fresh food to neighborhoods that no longer have groceries, and he sees the Food Hub’s role to connect those consumers with area food sources. “The whole thing is a decentralized food system, so it does harken back to your milkman.” A big problem for food producers is complying with food and health code requirements, and the Food Hub helps with that process. Warehouse space also is available for budding companies to store equipment and inventory. The Food Hub also helps growers and food start-ups get certified under the Good Agricultural Practices, or GAP, that is required by most buyers. A GAP audit can be quite costly, but McMath said the Food Hub has pooled producers to reduce the expense. The Food Hub also helps producers to comply with the federal Food Safety Modernization Act. “We try to break down those barriers,” McMath said. McMath is using his vending machine experience to place fresh vegetables in vending machines located at large corporations in Lafayette, such as Stuller Settings and CGI, for their employees, as well as public locations such as Girard Park. The Food Hub has partnered with Helical Holdings, a Lafayette-based company that builds hydroponic greenhouse systems. The company’s first greenhouse was installed in Lafayette at a small Catholic school, John Paul the Great Academy. Students use the greenhouse to learn about growing food, and to start seedlings for their own vegetable garden. Kohlie Frantzen started Helical Holdings with Dylan Ratigan, a former MSNBC host. Frantzen is a Lafayette native who previously was a prosecutor in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. He returned to Lafayette after Hurricane Katrina with his wife, Elise, daughter of the former Crowley mayor, Isabella delaHoussaye. Frantzen said the greenhouse system has many of the standardized systems found in the oilfield where his father, the late Dan Frantzen, a co-founder of Stone Oil Co. Frantzen and Ratigan teamed with and the Patriots Farmers of America at Berryville, Virginia, setting up a greenhouse there to help veterans learn the business of growing food as a post-military career. Frantzen said he originally had the idea of bringing Helical Outposts to Third World countries such as Haiti, but then he realized the facilities were needed just as much in many areas of the U.S. The John Paul the Great greenhouse, run by Shawn Istre, produces leafy vegetables and tomatoes year-round. The roots of all the plants never touch soil. All nutrients are monitored to maintain the proper levels, and the plants are fed through an irrigation system. Because the plants are not grown in soil, the produce cannot be sold as organic, even though no fungicides, insecticides or herbicides are used. Frantzen is fine with that because he doesn’t want soil to touch the plants. “I don’t ever want to be associated with soil.” He said soil-borne diseases cause problems for plants and people but the hydroponics system avoids that. Gloves are required for anyone to touch a plant inside the greenhouse. All activities such as harvesting and feeding the plants, are carefully recorded. Grow lights are only used to get seedlings to a size for transplanting into the trays to grow into mature plants. A water filtration system handles 2,000 gallons of water a day. A solar backup system is part of the Helical Outpost that has been designed to be manufactured as a complete hydroponic greenhouse system that will fit inside of a shipping container. When it arrives, the parts are assembled, 6-mil plastic sheeting covers the greenhouse frame, and the shipping container is used as a control center with Wi-Fi, satellite communications and an 11-kilowatt solar system. A greenhouse like the one at the Lafayette school runs about $200,000, but Frantzen said that is a far cry from the cost of a farmer getting started in conventional row-crop agriculture. And the greenhouse can be relocated. Istre, who had no agricultural background, said running the system is easy. Monitoring temperature and humidity is done with a metering system. Nutrient levels and water pH are carefully maintained. Much of the process is following the protocol established by Helical Holdings, but that’s only part of the process of growing food with the system. “Learning to talk to the plants is a different story,” said Istre. “The plants speak their own language.” Istre said changes have to be made as seasons change. The greenhouse and hyddroponics system allows him to grow lettuce when the temperature is 100 degrees outside the greenhouse. Because the lettuce is harvested with roots intact, the leaves stay fresher longer. Lettuce and tomatoes and other plants grown in Istre’s greenhouse are sold through the virtual grocery and delivered by Waitr, and several restaurants in town use its products including Saint Street Inn, Pamplona, Café Josephine, Bread and Circus and Social. Lafayette groceries offer their products, including Champagne’s, Breaux’s Mart and Sandra’s Grocery. McMath hopes to have a Helical greenhouse as a proof-of-concept project to supply vegetables for eight Lafayette Parish public schools by the start of the coming school year. As McMath sees it, the food infrastructure potential has been vibrant in Acadiana. Growers are producing food but they need more ways to get their food on consumer plates, some people want to be growers and don’t know where to start, and consumer demand for locally grown food is strong. The Food Hub is making those connections. “It’s a chicken and egg situation, and I just built the cage,” McMath said. You can read more about the Acadiana Food Hub on the website www.acadianafoodhub.com. Story and photos by Bruce Schultz BELL CITY – It’s a nice cool spring day, but rice farmer Mark Zaunbrecher is anxious for warmer weather. “I hope I start sweating. That means the rice will start growing.” But it would be a few days of unusually cool weather before he would raise a sweat. Since he planted starting March 14, Zaunbrecher had been expecting the crop to take off, but the young seedlings were stalled by consistently chilly weather. By late April, he would have started flooding fields but even the earliest planted rice was only at the 3-4 leaf stage. Zaunbrecher and fellow farmers across south Louisiana were eagerly awaiting a warm-up. The average temperature for Lake Charles in April was 2.5 degrees below normal, according to the National Weather Service. At 65.9 degrees, the average temperature in April was only .6 degrees warmer than the average March temperature. That all changed after May 1, with temperatures climbing into the high 80s. Dr. Dustin Harrell, LSU AgCenter extension rice specialist, said rice responded favorably to the warmth. “It has really helped the rice rebound. We went from winter to summer pretty quick.” He said dry conditions have provided a good chance for farmers to apply fertilizer and herbicides. Harrell said the warm, dry weather allowed farmers in north Louisiana to get their rice planted quickly. Zaunbrecher is in charge of growing rice, soybeans and forage for Sweet Lake Farm Partners, owned by the Leach Family of Lake Charles. He has worked for the company 28 years, but has decided to retire after the 2019 crop. Dr. Steve Linscombe, retired director of the Rice Research Station at Crowley, said Zaunbrecher is an asset. “Mark is a true leader of the Louisiana rice industry. He has very deep roots in southwest Louisiana rice production.” Linscombe said Zaunbrecher has been an early adopter of new technology. “He has been a leader of the blackbird control program, and under his guidance this program has lessened the severity of bird damage for rice producers throughout the region.” Zaunbrecher is a fifth generation farmer. His father, Phillip Zaunbrecher, farmed on Lacassine Co. land near Hayes. “I was born and raised there.” He went straight from high school to the field, and he farmed on his own from 1973 until 1990 when he did some consulting work and that’s when he was hired by Sweet Lake Land Co. Zaunbrecher said he figured his way of growing rice 10 miles to the east of the Sweet Lake area would be no different in the Sweet Lake area, but he was wrong. “It’s been a challenge. Most of what I knew when I came here did not apply. You can go 3 miles north of here and it’s different.” For one thing, he said, the area doesn’t seem to get as much sunlight which slows growth. The area even had its own soil problem, which came to be known as Calcasieu disorder. The ground would release sulfurous gas, and plants would die after roots turned black. The only solution was to drain a field. But Zaunbrecher said the problem hasn’t been found in about 12 years. Thunderstorms seem to dump a higher amount of rainfall on the Sweet Lake area that complicates fungicide applications. “We had more than 100 inches of rain last year.” When it’s wet like it was last year, airplanes can’t use Sweet Lake airstrips because of the soggy ground, adding to the complications. The area’s soil drains poorly, he said. “You get an inch of rain over here, it takes a week to dry. If you work it too damp, it just gums up.” And then the wind is always blowing so rice has to be tall enough to withstand wave action. Zaunbrecher figures when he does flood this year, the level will have to be brought up gradually as the plants grow out of their stunted condition. Zaunbrecher said saltwater is a problem in the area. During severe droughts, salt starts to show up in well water. After hurricanes, like Rita in 2005, saltwater gets pushed north. After Rita, he tried to grow a crop but the salty soil yielded a crop he’d rather forget. It took a couple of years before the land was able to produce good yields, he said. Zaunbrecher said he has talked to old timers about farming in the early days, and they recall having to clear crabs from the wooden flumes used to move water, and that told him salt has long been a problem in the area. He’s worried about the water for this year’s crop. “Our surface water is as low as it’s ever been. It’s going to be interesting when we do start pumping.” Many of the fields have had rice grown for more than a century. Remnants of irrigation canals from the early days of rice farming still convey water to those fields. The Sweet Lake Canal which draws water from Lacassine Bayou remains viable, providing water to Sweet Lake Farm Partners, and other farmers in along its 16-mile reach. Each year, the canal is drained and sprayed for weed control. Rice grown on Sweet Lake Farm property is in a 2-year rotation, with a fallow year followed by a crop. Soybeans are grown on some rice acreage, but he said weather is a factor when it comes to planting. “The last 2 years, we’ve only been able to plant beans two days.” He said last year’s soybean yield averaged about 32 barrels. Ryegrass and bermudagrass for the cattle operation at Sweet Lake are grown separately from the rice ground. The company is slowly getting into the crawfish business as the infrastructure improvements are made gradually. Last year, he said the average yield for Sweet Lake was 47 barrels dry. “I’m proud of that for the year we had, especially rice going underwater three times.” He said the first flood came in the spring when rice was young, followed by a tropical event in June that brought flooding rains. The season ended with Hurricane Harvey that flooded the second crop, making much of it unharvestable. “It was just an ocean. You couldn’t see anything.” RiceTec hybrids with the Clearfield trait are used on all the Sweet Lake Farm rice acreage, which totals 2,020 this year, down about 300 acres because of a pipeline being laid across some of the property. Zaunbrecher said panicle blight is the worst disease for the area, and all of the hybrid is treated with fungicides. To lessen the likelihood of disease and to reduce excess chaff, the amount of nitrogen is kept to 120-130 units per acre, applied with a precision ag equipment using data from grid sampling. Usually, he said, about 90 percent of the acreage is ready for planting with a no-till drill, but the wet fall prevented most of the field work. “This year I think I had 20 percent of my ground ready to go.” He said during his first 9 years at Sweet Lake, he wasn’t able to plow until the spring and much of the time he had to use a water buffalo and a chisel plow. “Working ground here is not a right, it’s a privilege.” Zaunbrecher uses Dermacor on all rice seed to address insect problems that include rice water weevils and borers. In addition, all seed is treated with AV-1011 bird repellent because of the high populations of blackbirds and ducks in the area. (A sister company, Sweet Lake Land, has a duck hunting and fishing operation also at Grosse Savanne.) “As soon as duck season ends, I like to drain everything and get them (ducks) on their way.” Zaunbrecher’s efforts to get birds out of the rice fields led him to getting a federal firearms license in 1985 so he could buy guns and ammo wholesale. If someone is looking for a particular gun, he can find it. Or if someone buys or sells a gun out-of-state, Zaunbrecher can use his firearms license to ship and receive. But he only works with people he knows, and, “I don’t keep any inventory.” “Generally when they come to me, they can’t find it anywhere else.” During the last 8 years many guns and ammo was difficult to source because of a buying frenzy, he said, but now firearm inventories are back to normal and the ammo supply is better, he said. But .22-caliber ammo is still in short supply. That interfered with Zaunbrecher’s favorite caliber for scaring birds away. He doesn’t just shoot a couple of rounds. It’s more like a couple dozen from a rifle with a banana clip. “My record is three bricks of .22 ammo in one day.” (A brick contains 500 rounds.) He said he was shooting so many .22 rounds that he would wear out the rifling of a Marlin .22-caliber. Different guns are more difficult to clean, he said. “When it comes to a .22, you can’t beat a Ruger.” He enjoys shooting the AK-47, and he said the loud report is quite effective at scaring ducks from a field. “That’s the ultimate Mexican squealer gun.” Zaunbrecher enjoys deer hunting, and he goes to Missouri and Texas to chase whitetails. He doesn’t have the passion for duck hunting anymore, mostly because duck hunting doesn’t seem to be as good as he remembers. After retirement, he’ll have a lot more time to work with guns and to work on his two show cars, both Plymouth GTXs, one from 1967 and another from 1969, with 440 cubic inch engines and 4-barrel carbs. And he hopes he and his wife, Alicia, will be able to travel. |
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