ENGLAND — Brad Whitehead grew up riding a tractor, sitting on the laps of some of the guys who worked for his dad.
He said he was just 12 years old the first time his dad sent him to Bunge Grain to haul a load of wheat in an 18-wheeler.
“I have had every undesirable job on the farm there is to have, and I still love it,” Whitehead said.
Brad Whitehead Farms was named the 2021 Lonoke County Farm Family of the Year.
“It means a lot. We get to tell my dad’s story, so to be honored like this means a lot,” Whitehead said.
Whitehead said his grandparents started farming in 1948, and continuing the legacy of his family has become more important, now that he his older.
William Whitehead, Brad’s dad, started farming in 1968 and continued until 2019. He owned a grocery store in Wright and farmed 16 acres at night after he closed the store.
At one time, William’s farming operation grew to 8,000 acres. He now owns 1,550 acres that Brad said he acquired “with hard work, hard-nosed negotiating, staying efficient through all of the hard years and plenty of help from my mom, Karen.”
Brad Whitehead graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 1995 with a degree in marketing management. He was the first male in his family to graduate from college.
“After graduation, I moved back home and started working for my dad on his farm,” he said. “In December of 1995, I had a meeting with my dad about pay, and it did not go the way I wanted or expected.
“He told me during our meeting that if I did not like the pay I was receiving, I could get some ground and farm on my own. He also told me that if I continued to work for him, I would never amount to anything.”
So in 1996, with his dad’s help, Brad Whitehead rented 600 acres in Jefferson County.
“I have been very fortunate to have support from all of the people in my family to make this farming business a success,” Whitehead said. “I also could not have done it without a great core labor group, some of which have been with us for more than 40 years.”
Whitehead has been farming for 26 years and owns 1,930 acres and rents 2,419 acres for his farm. He has 988 acres of rice, 1,141 acres of corn and 2,280 acres of beans.
Currently, all of his rice goes to Producers Rice Mill in Stuttgart. Whitehead said he sells his corn and beans to whomever has the best basis, which is the difference between the future price and the local cash price.
“I do not employ anyone to help me with the markets,” he said. “I have tried using a marketing service in the past but did not find it beneficial.”
He said that in order to help the farm’s planting efficiency, the operation went from eight rows to 12 rows and also changed from a 20-foot drill to a 42-foot drill for better planting efficiency.
“We run newer and bigger equipment to help keep good employees,” Whitehead said. “We use dummy lines on poly-pipe irrigation to make it less labor intensive and more efficient.
“All rice is zero grade, which aides in efficiency and decreases labor.”
Whitehead said he is currently running a stripper header to harvest the rice, which allows for faster harvest times and, in turn, for more acres to be harvested.
“To help with grain storage and to allow for grain maturity before shipping, we were able to add grain storage to our property,” he said.
In 2008, the Whiteheads built a 144,000-bushel-capacity loop, and in 2011, they added an additional loop system that added a 159,000-bushel-capacity
batch dryer and wet tank, and in 2015, the Whiteheads added an additional 208,000-bushel capacity of storage.
“I am a firm believer in getting fieldwork done in the fall,” Whitehead said. “After a long and hard harvest season, no one looks forward to the fieldwork, but it is the best time for it to be done.
“My goal every year is to have everything ready in the fall, to be prepared for spring planting.”
He said he doesn’t usually get 100 percent, but every acre already worked up and ready to go counts, especially in a wet spring.
“I have a saying: ‘Early planting leads to early harvest,’” Whitehead said. “August, September and October are typically better months for harvest because you have longer days and better weather.”
He said he does not like working on Sundays.
“My grandfather, Hershel Archer, used to say, ‘You work on Sunday, you will spend all day Monday fixing up what you tore up on Sunday,’” Whitehead said. “There are times when it is necessary to beat the weather that we are required to work on Sunday.
“I am very adamant about not wasting time because it is the one thing you can never get back.”
Whitehead said he has plans of development for future expansion, including more acreage.
“I think one of the most important ways to survive in the current farming culture is to have more acreage,” he said. “That being said, I would like to increase the current acreage that I farm.”
He said farm-equipment prices are so extremely high that an operation needs more acres to survive. Buying in bulk helps the bottom line, and “it is not what you make, but what you spend making it,” he said.
“The more bushels of grain you have to sell, the better leverage you have,” he said. “Increasing my farm acreage would also open up my operation to build additional grain storage.
“This will help with the pricing of crops.”
He said he also tries to find new ways to get in the field earlier, so in 2020, he built a different kind of implement to air out the ground earlier.
“We are on our sixth attempt to get it right, but I’m not giving up,” he said. “I no-till, or minimal-till, as much as possible. This helps with runoff and efficiency.
“All of my rice fields are zero grade and stagger down from one to another to allow for water conservation.”
He said that after the harvest is complete, he floods the rice and bean fields for winter duck hunters. The Whiteheads prepare and lease approximately 1,200 acres of duck ground per year.
The Whiteheads also have a custom spraying enterprise and spray about 9,000 to 20,000 acres per year. Sprayers are most often used in the fields to add water, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer.
In 1997, he married his wife, Jill, whom he met at the University of Arkansas. He said they were married for many years before she knew the difference between a “good” rain and a “bad” rain.
“She is a valued partner and another reason for our successful years of farming,” he said. “We have made many tough decisions through some extremely trying years to keep this farm operation going.”
In 1998, he rented 1,000 acres in Blakemore and continued to add acreage until he obtained close to 3,000 acres, which is the amount he farmed until 2019.
In 2006, his family purchased 380 acres of the ground that he previously rented at Blakemore. He said he and his wife were able to purchase 450 acres at Blakemore in 2010.
“The ground came with a house and a shop,” Whitehead said. “To this day, this is our farm headquarters. The house was torn down, and the shop has been remodeled to accommodate larger equipment.”
The couple have two daughters: Mallory, who recently graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in marketing management, and Lauren, who recently graduated from Pulaski Academy in Little Rock.
Lauren has received an academic scholarship to Hendrix College in Conway, where she will continue her academic and volleyball career.
“I attribute all my success to that meeting in December of 1995 with my dad and all of the many lessons he gave me over the 25 years we worked together, but had separate operations,” Whitehead said.
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.