Farming: Is Memphis the next California?
Conservationists at a Washington philanthropy noticed ever more arid growing conditions on California farms. They asked a simple question. If drought-prone California can no longer supply the nation as it has for decades, who can? They have no answer yet. But the question has led them to Memphis. World Wildlife Fund has geared up the Next California project – a study of whether the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta’s water-rich farms can someday grow vegetables on a scale large enough to sustain the United States.
World Wildlife, which takes in about $218 million per year in donations, grants and other revenue, has begun advertising for a labor analyst able to figure out whether the towns of the Delta, home to about 800,000 people in the two states, could fill thousands of possible new jobs on future vegetable farms.
“We are really excited about the Delta region with its history of farming,” said Julia Kurnik, World Wildlife’s director of innovation startups. “I don’t think
California will stop being an agricultural state any time soon. But farming is beginning to shift out of California. If water becomes unaffordable, they definitely will move. We are seeing a little bit of a shift already.”
Is it science fiction?
Turning Delta land planted in cotton since the 1840s into celery fields sounds like science fiction. Cotton farms have millions of dollars tied up in land and equipment.
That’s not to say change can’t happen, though a bunch of things must fall in place. First is the willingness to change. Some early signs suggest a new awareness:
❚ Davos on the Delta, the annual Memphis farm technology conference, devoted part of its May session to largescale output of indoor-grown vegetables.
❚ Los Angeles investor Columbia Agcap Partners launched American Land & Cattle Co., a Memphis startup that aims to raise beef cattle on 800,000 rain-watered acres in the region. It would rival cattle feed lots in the arid West.
❚ Boston seed startup Indigo Ag has put its 875-employee operations center in Memphis. The firm says its high-tech cotton seeds can rely on natural microbes and flourish with less pesticide, herbicide and in some versions less water.
❚ The Seam, a Memphis institution that operates the national spot market for cotton, has helped lead the industry’s exploration of blockchain technology.
❚ Aglaunch, a Memphis ag-tech financier and developer, was singled out by the U.S. Small Business Administration as an innovation cluster.
None of these examples are connected. Yet they signal change ahead. And now World Wildlife Fund, a group probably best known for its support of pandas in Asia, is looking at what happens if climate change slashes the water available for California farmers.
“Though heavy snows broke the drought in 2017, the Golden State is expected to become hotter and drier over time,” World Wildlife executive director Jason Clay wrote recently in a trade journal. “This is bad news for farmers as well as America’s consumers and food companies, as California is the country’s leading food producer, accounting for a third of the vegetables and twothirds of the fruits and nuts produced in the U.S.”
What could replace arid California? Clay pointed to eastern Arkansas, northwest Mississippi, southern Missouri and western Tennessee.
“The existing agricultural area is similar in size to that of California,” Clay notes. “It has good soils, but the cost of land is only 20 percent of that of California.”
What he’s talking about is the area
“We need to breed specific crops less affected by heat and humidity. That will be achieved. We’re working hard on this with Agricenter, vegetable companies and universities.”
Pete Nelson surrounding Memphis.
Memphis considered hub for agriculture region
Memphis is the commercial hub for 13 million acres of farmland, a region that reaches 100 miles in every direction from the city. Half the nation’s rice grows here, plus a good share of the corn, cotton and soybeans. Farmers call this row-crop country. It is unlike any place else.
Pioneers settled America’s Middle West chiefly in small homesteads, so it is customary to stand almost anywhere today and see a distant old house or barn, while the Delta is distinctive for long sight lines seldom impeded by barns, houses or towns. A single Delta farm can stretch over 10,000 acres, most of it tended by a few workers operating machines worth well over $1 million.
Parts of the Great Plains resemble the Delta, except the Memphis region has lots of water and not only in the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. In northern Arkansas, the Ozark Mountains are like limestone sieves steadily leaking water that fell as rain to the north into Delta rivers. And the region has something else exceptional.
Memphis’ concentration of barge, rail and truck networks is almost unique in the ability to get massive harvests quickly on the way to buyers. Say a Berlin food maker aims to buy a shipload of rice grown near Stuttgart, Arkansas. Any number of Memphis’ distribution firms can organize the entire expedition from elevator to steamship line to Germany. Kurnik plans to look at the Delta for the first time in late summer. Her Harvard studies included the feasibility of growing indoor vegetables as a business atop supermarkets. She has a good grasp of the food chain, less so for rowcrop economics, though that doesn’t matter.
She’s not coming here to talk rice farmers into planting celery and lettuce. She’s coming here to look at the what if: If California gets ever more arid, do Memphis and the Delta have what it takes to step up vegetable output?
Her first stop: She’s set to visit Aglaunch. It will introduce her to farmers.
Aglaunch at center of change
“We’re going to take markets from California. We’re going to take markets from countries like Argentina. We’re going to share markets with California and Argentina. We’re building the system in the way that it can become the hot bed for agriculture.’’
This is Pete Nelson talking. He’s executive director of Aglaunch, whose board of directors includes wealthy Memphis entrepreneur Carolyn Hardy, former chair of the Greater Memphis Chamber, and Andrew Mccarroll, general counsel of Southeastern Asset Management, the Memphis firm that operates the $2 billion Longleaf Partners mutual fund. Memphis Bioworks Foundation formed Aglaunch four years ago with the goal of attracting 100 entrepreneurs and establishing 100 companies throughout the state by 2020.
Nelson doubts the Delta will transition entirely to vegetables. He said it doesn’t have to. Astonishingly small acreage accounts for the nation’s entire Vidalia onion crop. Similarly, a Delta cotton producer interested in a highprofit specialty crop like strawberries can grow the fruit on a few hundred acres. Like-minded cotton growers can form a cooperative in the region to wash, package and ship the berries to grocers.
The barrier to this isn’t labor. Technology is developing drones and sensors able to tend and pick crops, Nelson said. Nor is the barrier the infrastructure like packing sheds and cold storage. Those can come easily. The biggest hurdle, he said, centers on the seeds.
“We need to breed specific crops less affected by heat and humidity,” Nelson said. “That will be achieved. We’re working hard on this with Agricenter, vegetable companies and universities.”
Dozens of farmers in the region are tuned in to this, he said, and particularly the demand from American shoppers in search of better and more nutritious produce.
“Farming is fundamentally going to change. Whether this is in five years or 10 years, we don’t know. We know it’s going to happen. The biggest change is coming from the voice of the consumer. I say this to even the most recalcitrant old-line farmer. ‘Just go into the grocery store.’ Ancient grains, organics, foods you didn’t see 10 years ago. Consumer trends trace back to the farmer. We’re going to have to change.”
executive director of Aglaunch
Ted Evanoff, business columnist of The Commercial Appeal, can be reached at evanoff@commercialappeal.com and (901) 529-2292.