Advocacy
M: Berry Household Farms goals to show that farming is each “cool” and important throughout generations. How does your loved ones’s legacy of sustaining generational farming and constructing wealth affect your mission to embody the importance and “coolness” of farming and ranching?
Cedric: Our goal was to type of let our era and the generations coming behind us see that should you do it in a wise manner, it’s not as a lot laborious work because it was — and it’s truly enjoyable.
when my dad and his siblings have been rising up…after they [worked the farm], it was type of like chores…they had to do it, and all people wished to get away from it as a result of it was laborious work.
However taking a look at Georgia — which, for one, is an agricultural state, and that’s [the industry] the place numerous the cash is pumped into — with this, I assume you could possibly say, newfound development or motion [to return to landstewardship], the cash is there, the assistance is there. So, should you have a look at it from a unique perspective, resembling, “Okay, all people needs to be a enterprise proprietor or entrepreneur, and farming isn’t any completely different, I’m a enterprise proprietor filling a necessity and assembly a requirement,” you could possibly flip [farming] right into a enterprise and model it on the identical time. It’s type of extra thrilling than pondering of it as only a chore.
I’m hoping that in the future our youngsters get somewhat extra concerned. My grandfather (Curtis Berry) began along with his father, after which, in fact, with my dad (Aubrey Berry) and all of his siblings rising up, they type of needed to work issues. My grandfather acquired to the place he didn’t [have to] do as a lot anymore. He at all times did one thing, however he didn’t do as a lot, and my grandmother at all times mentioned she wished to see one thing accomplished [with keeping the farm going]. Then my uncle (Lamar) acquired again into [daily farm work] round 2008, after which my dad joined in with him a few years later, and we at all times helped. We noticed the chance, like, “Hey, that is what our household does,” so [my cousin] Tony and I acquired collectively and jumped in, too!