STANLEY HUGHES: 2004 SMALL FARMER OF THE YEAR

Stanley Hughes, center, shows off his award and jacket, after being named the Gilmer L. and Clara Y. Dudley Small Farmer of the Year in a ceremony in Stallings Ballroom on the campus of N.C. A&T State University Wednesday, March 24, 2004. Hughes is joined from left by, M. Ray McKinnie, Associate Dean and Administrator The Cooperative Extension Program, Britt Cobb, Commisioner of Agriculture, Fletcher Barber, Orange County Cooperative Extension Agent, Alton Thompson, Dean School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.

Orange County farmer Stanley Hughes is the 2004 Small Farmer of the Year, a notable honor for at least two reasons.
One, the award speaks to the skill it takes to achieve such superlative recognition. Two, getting the award means that Hughes had to slow down at least long enough to receive the honor, bestowed March 24 during Small Farms Day on A&T's campus.
You don't get to be Small Farmer of the Year by standing still, as exemplified by Hughes.

Any given day may find Hughes in Minnesota learning how computers can help farmers run more successful farms; or in Louisiana learning more about niche markets. He might be fixing a tractor on his 75-acre farmstead, or at the Carrboro Farmer's Market selling the collards and kale that he's reaped from his Pine Knot Farm.

Flip the pages of the July 2003 Gourmet magazine and there - alongside stories about "fruits from paradise" and blueberry tarts - again, you'll find Hughes; featured for having some of the best organically-certified produce in the country.

Recognized by the Cooperative Extension Program at N.C. A&T State University which awarded him Small Farmer of the Year in memory of the late farmers Gilmer L. and Clara Y. Dudley, Hughes was honored for his willingness to try alternative agriculture, for his success at making it work, for his community networking, and by using Cooperative Extension programs to stay abreast of developing farm technologies.
"Mr. Hughes has been very receptive to trying new and innovative ways to continue to keep his farming operation viable,'' says Dr. Fletcher Barber, Director of the Orange County Extension Center. "He's well respected in his community, because of his leadership and the initiative he takes in pursuing opportunities to try new things.''

Hughes, 55, is a third-generation farmer, the youngest and the only one of 12 children born to Bennie and Addie Hughes who pursued farming as a career.

For more than 20 years, Hughes worked a full-time job while farming tobacco. In 1996, though, after being laid off from a manufacturing job, farming became his full-time job.

That year, Hughes became the first Orange County farmer to grow organic tobacco, in addition to his regular tobacco harvest; he also grew soybeans, wheat and a few head of cattle, and began the shift to more organic production of future crops. Despite all those diverse pursuits, certification requirements, juggling and maintenance, Hughes made a pleasant discovery: full-time farming suited him well.

"It was sort of relaxing,'' Hughes says. "You had a little freedom. It wasn't just all work, working day and night.''

Just a year later, though, the tobacco industry began to change dramatically and Hughes had to respond quickly to continue making a profit off a farm whose tobacco allotment was whittled from 25 acres to 15 acres.

By working with Extension and the nonprofit farmers-training organization Operation Spring Plant, Hughes learned even more about organic farming. He began to sell his produce at farmers' markets. He has also begun pastured poultry, raising naturally-fed chickens. His latest venture is organic herbs, the certification for which he has just received. Today he farms more than 300 acres, 75 of which he owns.

"Farming is expensive,'' Hughes says "With the high cost of living, the high cost of farming, if you're not a larger farmer, you just about need to do other things if you're trying to stay on the farm.''

Hughes is an average-size man with the hands of a giant, a quiet demeanor, and just enough of a smile that makes you wonder if he's knows a secret the rest of us haven't figured out.

"Being black, there wasn't much future in farming,'' Hughes says. "To get loans and get them on time, you had to put up more collateral than white farmers and a lot of people weren't willing to do that. Most black people didn't have anybody who could co-sign for them, then if they got anything it was too risky for them to seek any expansion and risk losing it.''

Contemporary programs, though, such as Operation Spring Plant and Golden LEAF, which provide grants and assistance to limited-resource and minority farmers, along with Extension outreach, are making the risks worthwhile for Hughes.

He has two daughters, but doesn't anticipate either of them - one is a Charlotte businesswoman, the other still in school - taking over the farm that's been in his family for more than 100 years. He believes they should have the right, just as his parents gave him and his siblings, to make their own way.

It's enough for him to continue the family legacy, to put his sweat and ingenuity into the same land that was tilled and sown and plowed by his maternal and paternal grandfathers before him.
"At one time, this farm supported three families and now it's down to where it's supporting one,'' Hughes says, "but I feel good to be the only one carrying out our grandfathers' dreams.