Booker T. Whatley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Booker T. Whatley

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Booker T. Whatley (November 5, 1915 in Calhoun County, Alabama - September 3, 2005 inMontgomery, Alabama) was an agricultural professor at Tuskegee University, Alabama, USA and oneof the pioneers of sustainable agriculture in the post-WWII era.

Contents [hide]

1 Regenerative farming system2 Education3 Early years4 The Whatley Plan5 Later years6 Contributions7 Publications8 References

Dr. Whatley is best known for his regenerative farming system in combination with the directmarketing concept of Pick-Your-Own (PYO) harvesting by a farmer-managed buyer's club, which hepopularized through his plan. Today, PYO (or U-Pick) farms are a worldwide phenomenon.[1]

Whatley believed that the regenerative system of farming by small farmers made greater use of theinternal resources that a farm produced and, therefore, when properly managed would provide amore sustainable livelihood.[2] Regenerative farming has a long history and can be traced to theagricultural extension work of Dr. George Washington Carver at Tuskegee University in the early partof the 20th century, as well as Carver's scientific contributions regarding the nitrogen cycle and thebiological regeneration of soils in the southern United States where he introduced crop rotationmethods in combination with the planting of nitrogen-fixing legumes, such as peanuts, peas, andsoybeans.[3]

Raised on a family farm in Anniston, Alabama as the oldest of his parent's 12 children, Whatleyreceived his B.S. degree in agriculture from Alabama A & M University. Upon graduation, he wasdrafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War, where he was assigned to manage a hydroponicfarm in Japan to provide safe, nutritious foods for the US troops stationed there. After completing hismilitary service, and encouraged by the scientist who interviewed him for his assignment in Japan,Whatley enrolled at Rutgers University to earn a doctorate in horticulture, which he completed in1957. He later earned a law degree from Alabama A&M University in 1989.

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Booker T. Whatley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Whatley[8/25/2013 11:41:09 AM]

Around 1970, Dr. Whatley, who started his professional career at Tuskegee University, beganchampioning "smaller and smarter" as a successful strategy for small farmers, rather than competingfor the same market as large farmers, and going broke in the process. Small farmers, he advised,should not raise commodity crops such as grains, but should instead raise higher-value crops suchas berries and grapes and market them to a loyal group of customers (target: 1000), who wouldharvest the crops themselves and pay for the privilege of doing so as members of a ClienteleMembership Club.[4]

Whatley counseled farmers to put greater emphasis on marketing and identifying high value cropsand enterprises that are more profitable on smaller units of land, and, most of all, to pay greaterattention to their farm's internal resources to their benefit. By internal resources, Whatley meant theland and its soil, "the sun, air, rain, plants, animals, people, and all the other physical resources thatare within the immediate environment of every farm."[5]

The Whatley small farm plan, which he adopted as regenerative agriculture (a method of sustainableagriculture) from his Rodale and New Farm associations, involves four core components: (1)creating a biodiversified PYO (pick-your-own or U-Pick) farm between 10 and 200 acres (0.81 km2);(2) producing at least 10 diverse products (agricultural and/or artisanal) on a year-round basis thatare supported through a Clientele Membership Club (CMC)—similar to the USDA supportedCommunity Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms today—and operating in a county-wide area having apopulation center of about 50,000 residents; (3) marketing to CMC members for 40% of supermarketpricing; and (4) yields a profit.[6]

His broader core philosophy is summarized below in "The Guru's" (Dr. Whatley) 10Commandments.[7]

Thy small farm shalt:

I. Provide year-round, daily cash flow.II. Be a pick-your-own operation.III. Have a guaranteed market with a Clientele Membership Club.IV. Provide year-round, full-time employment.V. Be located on a hard-surfaced road within a radius of 40 miles of a population

center of at least 50,000, with well-drained soil and an excellent source of water.VI. Produce only what they clients demand—and nothing else!VII. Shun middlemen and middlewomen like the plague, for they are a curse upon

thee.VIII. Consist of compatible, complementary crop components that earn a minimum of

$3,000 per acre annually.IX. Be 'weatherproof', at least as far as possible with both drip and sprinkler

irrigation.X. Be covered by a minimum of $250,000 worth ($1 million is better) of liability

insurance.

Upon retirement from academia, Whatley focused on promoting his system of small-scale farming,quickly becoming a nationally known expert and an inspiration to readers of Mother Earth News andOrganic Gardening Magazine in the 1980s. To further expand his audience and to deliver his

Early years [ edit source | edit ]

The Whatley Plan [ edit source | edit beta ]

Later years [ edit source | edit beta ]

Booker T. Whatley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Whatley[8/25/2013 11:41:09 AM]

message for turning a small farm into a profitable enterprise, Whatley traveled extensively in the USand overseas, giving training seminars and sharing his ideas. Many of his ideas appeared over timein The New Farm Magazine and in his monthly Small Farm Technical Newsletter, which reachedabout 20,000 subscribers in fifty states and twenty-five foreign countries.[8]

In 1985, Tom Monaghan, founder and former president of Domino's Pizza, Inc., was so inspired afterreading in the Wall Street Journal about Whatley's plan to help small farmers make big money hecalled to ask him to develop a 100-acre (0.40 km2) PYO corporate farm ecosystem at Domino'sWorld Headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The farm was part of a $300 million 1,500-acre(6.1 km2) project that was to raise fruits, vegetables and herbs, as well as lamb, venison, fish, duck,quail, pheasant, mushrooms, honey, and Christmas trees. The harvest was supplied to Domino'sfranchises in the Michigan area and to its employees through a Clientele Membership Club.[9]

While many in the agriculture establishment could not relate to Whatley's "the farm as enterprise"philosophy, Tom Monaghan and Booker T. Whatley were instant comrades. Whatley described therelationship in this manner:

Although the USDA and the land grant college agriculture departments "are pushingdiversification, [they are] relying on traditional marketing outlets like farmers marketsand cooperatives. That just won't work. Small farmers simply can't afford to pick, grade,wash, package and haul their produce maybe 100 miles or more to market, yet that'sexactly what the so-called experts are telling them to do. Tom Monaghan realized allthat immediately. He is no dummy when it comes to marketing. Excellent marketing iswhat helped him build Domino's Pizza into a $2 billion-a-year business with some3,800 stores in seven countries. One of the things that he quickly realized during hisfirst year in the pizza business was this: It takes as much time to make a small pizzaas it does to make a large one, and it takes just as long to deliver a small pizza.Dropping small pizzas caused an almost immediate 50 percent increase in his sales.Almost the same thing happened when he eliminated submarine sandwiches from hismenu."[10]

Booker T. Whatley is among the modern pioneers of sustainable farming.[11] As Jeff Helms wrote ofhim in 2005, Whatley was a man 30 years ahead of his time:

Almost 20 years ago, Whatley was writing about U-pick operations, communitysupported agriculture (CSA), drip irrigation, rabbit production, farmer-owned huntingpreserves, kiwi vines, shiitake mushrooms, veneer-grade hardwood stands, on-the-farmbed and breakfasts, direct marketing, organic gardening and goat cheese production.What’s even more astounding is that he was advocating many of these ideas in the1960s and ’70s.[12]

Throughout his career, Whatley presented practical, positive entrepreneurial options for small farmoperators that included production diversification, organic farming practices, farm value-addedproducts and innovative, direct marketing schemes. These sustainable alternatives have grown andflourished over the last two decades, being adopted by USDA and several states. Today, theycurrently provide important niche markets for small- and medium-sized farmers around the world.However, his fight with the US agriculture establishment was ongoing, as he believed that USDA andland grant colleges continued to push big farm policies on the small farmer who could ill-afford theirprograms.[13]

Among the several plant varieties that Whatley created, the following are representative:

Contributions [ edit source | edit beta ]

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Foxxy Lottie grape cultivar (named after Lottie, his wife of 56 years);Five sweet potato varieties, including the popular yellow-meated Carver sweetpotato;15 varieties of muscadine grapes.[citation needed]

Booker T. Whatley (1915–2005) and the Editors of New Farm, Booker T. Whatley’s Handbook onHow to Make $100,000 Farming 25 acres (100,000 m2): With Special Plans for Prospering on 10to 200 acres (0.81 km2). Edited by George DeVault. Emmaus, PA: Regenerative AgricultureAssociation; distributed by Rodale Press, 1987. xi, 180p. This volume is really a compilation ofmaterials and experiences of Dr. Whatley and some of his many practitioners, together withalready published articles from 'The New Farm Magazine' . 1987."The Plowboy Interview" , Mother Earth News, May/June 1982.

1. ^ see Neil D. Hamilton, The Legal Guide for Direct Farm Marketing. Drake University/SARE, 1999; "AnOverview of Small Farm Direct Marketing" by M. E. Swisher and James Sterns, The Institute of Foodand Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida; and "Direct Marketing" by Katherine Adam, RadhikaBalasubrahmanyam, and Holly Born. ATTRA Publication #IP113, 1999.

2. ^ Booker T. Whatley, How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: RegenerativeAgriculture Association, 1987. 180 pages.

3. ^ Toby Fishbein, "The legacy of George Washington Carver" , Special Collections Department, IowaState University Library, 1998; Mary Bellis, "George Washington Carver" , About.com InventorsSeries.

4. ^ Whatley, ibid., pp. 22-28.5. ^ Robert Rodale, "Your Farm is Worth More than Ever," in Whatley, ibid., p. 9.6. ^ Whatley, ibid., Part I: The Theory, pp. 1-8.7. ^ Whatley, ibid., pp. x-xi; "Booker T. and the Pizza King" , Mother Earth News , July/August 1988 (This

article further elaborates on Dr. Whatley's commandments.8. ^ "Book Review by Lyn Frazer" , Southern Changes, Volume 10, Number 3, 1988, pp. 22.9. ^ "Booker T. and the Pizza King" , Mother Earth News , July/August 1988; Jeff Helms, "Dr. Booker T.

Whatley: His Seeds and Ideas Are Still Taking Root" , Neighbors, a publication of the AlabamaFarmers Federation, 2 Nov 2005; Whatley, ibid., Chapter 11: The Ultimate Small Farm, pp. 153-161.

10. ^ Whatley, ibid., p. 154.11. ^ Future Horizons: Recent Literature in Sustainable Agriculture , Volume 6 - Chapter VII; Mary V. Gold

and Jane Potter Gates, "Tracing the evolution of organic/sustainable agriculture: a selected andannotated bibliography" . Beltsville, MD: United States Dept. of Agriculture, National AgriculturalLibrary, [1988]; updated and expanded, May 2007.

12. ^ Helms, Ibid.13. ^ Owusu Bandele, Ph.D. "Diversifying Your Farming Operation" in the USDA 1999 Agricultural

Marketing Outreach Workshop Training Manual; Helms, Ibid.

Authority control VIAF: 77850494 ·

Categories: American academics People from Anniston, Alabama 1915 births 2005 deaths

Publications [ edit source | edit beta ]

References [ edit source | edit beta ]

Booker T. Whatley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Whatley[8/25/2013 11:41:09 AM]