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Spotlighting peanut farmers and their families, the industry's superpower.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

July 23, 2019

18 Slides

The 2019 Southern Peanut Growers Conference highlighted superheroes this year -- the peanut farmer -- with the theme "Super farmers grow super peanuts."

For the welcome reception and dinner, guests were asked to dress as their favorite superhero. Don Koehler, executive director of the Georgia Peanut Commission, came dressed as a convincing Hulk. Ken Barton, executive director of the Florida Peanut Producers Association, sported a cape. Children got into the spirit dressing as Super Woman and Captain America.

The first general session opened with speakers Parker Wallace of Parker's Plate, Sherry Coleman Collins with the National Peanut Board, and Dr. Samara Sterling with Peanut Institue, discussing topics from peanut promotion through cooking to preventing peanut allergies to how the nutrients found in peanuts can help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease. 

The second general session focused on research with Dr. Soraya Bertioli with the University of Georgia, Dr. Edward M. Barnes with Cotton Incorporated, and Dr. Sott Monfort with the University of Georgia, headlining the session. The third session featured a trade and market update by U.S. Representative Drew Ferguson, George Lovatt, a peanut broker with Lovatt and Rushing, and Dr. Stanley Fletcher, an economist with the Center for Rural Prosperity and Innovation at Abraham Baldwin Agriculture College. 

In conjunction with the conference, Farm Press held its annual Peanut Efficiency Award breakfast honoring four peanut growers: Graham Ginn, Lower Southeast RegionDennis Spruill, Upper Southeast Region, Joe Morgan, Mid-South Region, and Jared and Lexi Floyd, Southwest Region

See PEA photo gallery, 20th class of PEA winners honored at annual breakfast

A joint meeting of producers' associations was also held, including Alabama Peanut Producers Association, Florida Peanut Producers Association, Georgia Peanut Commission, Mississippi Peanut Growers Association and Southern Peanut Growers.

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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