attracted by features like Fort Bragg, he
added, “are gobbling up land in droves.”
While this trend of farms growing in size
isn’t inherently good or bad, Goforth said,
it means the mid-sized farms will become
more and more rare.
“I do believe, if trends aren’t already
showing it, that we will see growth in farms
of about 10 acres or less, or up to 20 and
25 acres — over the next five or six years,”
Goforth said. “Generally speaking we’d like
to see more of the middle size farms — just
like the middle class — we would like to see
more of those farms hang on.”
Left, Chris Yaklin's farm in Richmond County. Yaklin is in care of tens of thousands of
chickens and more than a thousand acres of land all together, as well as the future of the
farming industry in Richmond County. To that end, he's taken to mentoring young farm-
ers, saying that if a new farmer hasn't already grown up around farming, the prospect
of taking one on later in life can be too daunting. Right, Chris Yaklin's chicken houses
in Richmond County. These chicken houses are outfitted with advanced climate control
technology to ensure that each generation of chickens is raised under the same conditions.
Yaklin said staying current on the latest technology is essential for farmers to compete
against larger farming operations.
Yaklin recalled that back in the 1950s and
70s, when he was watching his grandfather
tend to his cattle, that farmers could fairly
The biggest concern is that you don’t have young
farmers coming in to replace (the experienced
farmers). We’re losing a lot of knowledge and skill
that’s not being replaced.
Richard Goforth
The mid-sized farms have “felt the pinch”
of labor shortages and costs, as well as
market access, Clark said. Wood echoed
that assessment, saying that what would be
considered a mid-size farm that a farmer
could make a living with these days has
ballooned to between 800 to 1,200 acres,
which was large 30 years ago.
“(Farming row crops, hay or livestock) is
not practical on a small scale of about 20
to 30 acres,” Wood said. “There have to be
very specific crops to be profitable on that
scale — ten acres of cucumbers or tomatoes,
that’s a lot, a pretty big financial investment.
But it’s nothing compared to 1,000 acres of
cotton.”
10 • PROGRESS 2020
easily plant and sell whatever crops they
wanted and have enough money to send
their kids to college. In those days they
could also pick up people willing to work
who would wait outside a restaurant in
Ellerbe. But now college is more expensive,
and reliable, cheap labor is scarce.
“This sums it up the best: if you’re farming
today like they were 30 years ago, you’re
out of business,” Yaklin said. “Things have
changed that much and you’ve got to change
with it.”
To compete, Yaklin said young farmers
have to know their resources available to
them: local Soil and Water Conservation
Districts, the extension offices, the Sandhills
AgInnovation Center in Ellerbe, local Farm
Bureaus and the Farm Service Agency. At
best, Yaklin said, a new farmer has a mentor
who has been through it all.
“You’ve got to have a mentor to point you
in the right direction so you don’t make
their mistakes — you can’t afford mistakes,”
said Yaklin. “Young people don’t know how
to navigate financial institutions—general
business type things like, ‘Am I making
money or am I not?’
“Another barrier is you’ve got to use the
latest tech,” he continued, “and all of that
costs money. If big farmers are doing it and
you’re little, to compete with them you’ve
got to do the same kind of stuff.”
He added that another common pitfall is
variable pricing in areas like land grading:
grading may cost $20,000 in one area but
$60,000 in another area, which can seriously
throw off a budget line item.
Certain tax breaks, like the present use value
tax exemption, are available to farmers, but
Clark said many aren’t aware of it. Clark
explained that, unlike with new housing
developments, county governments make
money from farms because farmers spend
so much money on their operations and