Connie Locklear and Kathleen Liang, Ph.D., share a laugh while going over a balance sheet at the Locklear farm.
Farming is in Millard Locklear’s blood.
The Robeson County land he grows vegetables on has been in his family for generations.
He grew up helping his father. Even as he built a career managing construction projects for a Fortune 500 company, he returned to the farm when he could to lend a hand.
But knowing how to harvest vegetables or repair equipment isn’t the same as knowing how to turn a small farm into a profitable, sustainable business. So, when Locklear retired and took up farming full time, he knew he faced a knowledge gap.
“My daddy’s knowledge of what your yield is and what you should be getting out of an acre of land never was demonstrated to me,” he said.
To ensure his success, Locklear needed to learn the business of farming. He took classes and sought advice.
That’s how he met Chyi-Lyi (Kathleen) Liang, Ph.D., the W.K. Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Agriculture and co-director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems. The center is a partnership of N.C. A&T, N.C. State University and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
“She explained to me that nobody really does know their true costs,” Locklear said, recalling the farm business education he got from Liang.
As he started to record his numbers – costs, as well as how much produce he harvested for each acre he cultivated – his perspective changed.
“It made you look at farming a whole lot differently,” he said.
Liang is more than just a researcher and teacher. She’s passionate about helping farmers build sustainable businesses, often visiting them at their farms, poring over spreadsheets and reports with them, and providing tips on every aspect of running a profitable agricultural business.
“I’m one of the few scholars in the country actually dealing with the whole food system perspective, particularly to support farmers who are struggling to identify new opportunities,” she said.
North Carolina’s food gap
Liang has forged her career and unique expertise by focusing on the challenges and opportunities that small farmers, like Locklear, face.
Some farmers end up working full time in other careers just to support their farms and keep the land in the family. Some, upon retirement, sell their land to developers who use it for non-agricultural purposes, leading to an overall decline in farmland statewide. This decline contributes to food insecurity in the long run, as fresh, readily-avaliable produce and meat becomes less common and more expensive, and to environmental impacts as “working land” is lost to development.
In addition to the threat of lost farmland, North Carolina has other agricultural challenges.
Agriculture is the state’s largest industry, with an economic impact of $87 billion each year. The state is one of the country’s top producers of sweet potatoes, tobacco, poultry, Christmas trees, pork and trout. More than 17% of the state’s workforce is engaged in some aspect of agriculture, and more than 8 million acres of land are used for farming.
Despite this, North Carolina has above-average food insecurity rates. Many people don’t have access to affordable, healthy food because they live in so-called “food deserts,” where fresh food such as produce is hard to find.
Liang is one of the principal investigators on a 3½-year, $750,000 National Science Foundation-funded research project, Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems. The purpose of the project is to better understand food deserts and how to mitigate them via environmentally sound agriculture. Four other A&T professors are participating in the project.
“People are struggling so much with health issues while we have an abundance of fresh food,” Liang said. “So where is the gap?”
That gap is where Liang sees opportunities, in part because of her background growing up in Taiwan.
“My parents are both entrepreneurs,” she said. “So, I was taught to think differently, look for different aspects to create new opportunities. That’s just how I grew up.”
After a post-Ph.D. stint working with farmers through the University of Nebraska’s Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Liang dived into academia and the demands of research, teaching and building programs. She soon discovered that many farmers had little business training.
Agriculture is challenging enough as it is: The most powerful factor in production – the weather – is out of the farmer’s control. To be successful, farmers need to be efficient and, increasingly, entrepreneurial.
“Farmers with limited resources and limited information are always challenged with identifying opportunities,” Liang said. And identifying opportunities is fundamental to entrepreneurship.
Rather than restricting entrepreneurship to a traditional business environment, Liang said, we should ask, “How do we help farmers be entrepreneurs?”
That became the focus of much of Liang’s research, teaching, and hands-on work with farmers.
Niche markets, big opportunities
Arriving in Greensboro in 2016, Liang got an early indication that the town and A&T had something special going for them when she discovered a large Asian market.
“I was amazed by the scale of Asian vegetables they have in there,” she said. In her previous role at the University of Vermont, getting Asian vegetables had meant driving to Montreal or Massachusetts.
Finding the market was a reminder of the opportunities for local farmers to connect with local markets and restaurants to sell what they grow at good prices.
Much of Liang’s work has been focused on helping farmers connect to these local buyers, as well as figuring out what legal agreements, relationships and production changes farmers need so that they can sell successfully to these businesses.
“I connect them with their local restaurants – Chinese restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants, Thai restaurants – you name it,” she said. “It’s a demand-driven model.”
Liang and Connie Locklear sample ginger, one of the niche crops the Locklears are trying.
The new paradigm of supporting a sustainable food network has shifted from focusing heavily on supporting production to understanding demand behavior for farmers working to figure out what potential customers might buy at profitable prices.
Locklear, for example, has built his business growing organic vegetables, including Asian eggplant, Sungold tomatoes, okra and various greens – mostly heirloom varieties. In September, he was preparing to plant some Native American vegetables in response to a request from a restaurant.
These are all products that likely won’t show up in a big box store’s grocery section. These less common varieties can command higher prices from chefs at high-end restaurants and other picky buyers – and that means more revenue and higher potential profits for farmers like Locklear.
Local food, local farmers
Liang sees a strong connection between farm entrepreneurship and the “local food” movement. Consumer interest in buying locally grown, healthy food creates opportunities for farmers – if they recognize them and if they can connect to networks required to get food from fields and greenhouses into home and restaurant kitchens.
“The opportunity identification is a gap, as nobody told the farmers, ‘Oh, these people in this community want to buy this type of stuff. Can you grow some?’ ” she said.
But connecting farmers to consumers – in food deserts and elsewhere – requires transportation, brokers, processors and others. Together, they form a food network.
“The network takes the connection into consideration, how to build a relationship,” Liang said. “How do you trust the people who you’re buying from, where you’re selling to. And how do you support each other in the transaction that creates a win-win situation without creating more burden for each other.”
In addition to connecting farmers to local food networks, part of being entrepreneurial is sometimes selling nonfood products. For some farms, this might mean agritourism or “agri-tainment.”
For Stephanie Frisbee and her brother, Chris Morgan, it means flowers.
A blooming business
Frisbee and her brother run a China Grove farm that’s been in their family for more than 100 years. The family traditionally had raised cattle and grown hay and soybeans. In 2016, looking to diversify, Frisbee added flowers and started selling “beef and bloom” at a farmers market.
Frisbee attended a workshop at A&T where she met Liang and asked her for help with budgeting. “I was so impressed because she was, like, this little dynamo of a woman,” Frisbee said.
Liang and a graduate student started helping Frisbee and her brother with budgeting and financial records, but that soon morphed into marketing advice.
Over a table of canned okra, Liang discusses record keeping with Connie and Millard Locklear. Liang helps small farmers see entrepreneurial opportunities and ways to become more profitable.
For example, when Liang discovered Frisbee hadn’t been building an email list of her customers, “she was like, ‘You don’t realize how important that is,’ ” Frisbee said.
Frisbee’s brother is disabled from an on-the-job injury when he was a diesel mechanic. The siblings were applying for a North Carolina AgrAbility grant designed to help people with disabilities remain engaged in agriculture. During a meeting, Liang Skyped in from Hawaii – where it was 4 a.m. – to explain the farm’s finances to the representative.
“She singlehandedly, I think, came in and saved us and made us eligible to receive this funding,” Frisbee said. “That wasn’t something she had to do. She’s just been remarkable.”
