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This photo gallery is dedicated to farmer, family man and leader Tony Dill -- the 2021 PEA winner for the Southwest.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

June 30, 2021

25 Slides

Tony Dill saved his best peanut crop for his last. In 2020, Dill produced nearly 7,000 pounds an acre of irrigated peanuts on one of his Terry County, Texas, farms, with only about 1.5 inches of rainfall. 

But due to a fatal bout with COVID-19, Dill never got to dig or combine that final crop. He passed away October 23, 2020.

Friends, family and his community gathered along Dill's turnrows with their equipment and gathered his record crop. Many of the same people returned in November to harvest his final cotton crop.

Dill's sustainable farming methods, record yields and leadership within the agricultural and peanut community have earned him the 2021 Peanut Efficiency Award. 

Each year, Farm Press, in cooperation with the National Peanut Board, recognizes four producers from across the Peanut Belt. Dill is the Southwest honoree. July 17, his wife, Donna, children and grandchildren will accept the award on his behalf at the PEA Breakfast in Panama City Beach, Florida. The breakfast is held in conjunction with the Southern Peanut Growers Conference. 

The 2021 winners are as follows: Dan Ward, Upper Southeastern states; Armond Morris, Lower Southeastern states; Dan West, Midsouth states and Tony Dill, in the Southwest. 

Take a minute to look through this photo gallery in memory of Tony Dill and the legacy he left for his family and the peanut industry. To learn more about his blue-ribbon crop, click here.

kristin-final.jpg

Ryan Dill, left, in his dad's cotton field the day before his dad passed. Ryan's wife Kristin had this image made for him and it hangs in his office. (Photo by Kristin Dill, Graphics by Kassi Arismendez)

Read more about:

Peanut Efficiency Award

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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