Ben Sheppard Cowin of Williamston, N.C., the 2022 Farm Press Peanut Efficiency Award winner for the Upper Southeast,  is  a champion peanut farmer in every sense of the word.

Cowin farms with his younger brother Clayton Cowin in Martin County on land that has been tended by a member of the Cowin family for six generations. Ben began farming with his father, the late Ben Simon Cowin, in 1981. Clayton came on board four years after Ben in 1985, when his dad suffered a second heart attack and retired from the farm.

The Cowin brothers farm 1,250 acres of cotton, corn, soybeans and peanuts. Most of the land is devoted to cotton and peanutsBen considers himself a peanut farmer first and foremost. They grow seed peanuts for Severn Peanut Company.

To realize that Cowin is a champion peanut farmer, you need only to pop into his farm office at his home on Cowin Road, in Bear Grass, which is near Williamston. Lining the walls of the office are trophies recognizing Cowin as the top peanut yield winner in Martin County. He has been the top yielding farmer in the county for 24 years straight, winning the county trophy every year since 1997. In 2004, he was the top statewide yield winner in North Carolina. He has consistently been a member of the 5,000-pound club, achieving average yields of more than 5,000 pounds per acre.

In 2021, Cowin achieved an impressive yield of 6,083 pounds per acre. He planted the high-oleic Virginia-type varieties Bailey II and Sullivan for seed peanuts. He planted 224 acres of Bailey II and 20 acres of Sullivan.

“I’m not a person to cut corners much. I’m not going to cut corners and wonder if it’s going to be right or not. I do all I can, and when I go to bed at night, I try to sleep well. I don’t want to cut corners on a crop because you never know when the weather is going to change,” he explained.

“We’ve been blessed. The Lord has looked out for us. I love what I do. To be good at it, you’ve got to love it.”