Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 19

Above: The days of packing melons in trailers full of straw are no more. Converted school buses are stacked full of melons, sometimes as many
as six to eight loads per bed. Below right: The crews are all smiles as they find their rhythm, handing off melons with speed, soft hands and ease.
2020 was the first year he completely removed center
pivot irrigation and went to drip tape. " Of course, this is
all about sustainable agriculture. "
The changes were made just in time. During the summer
of 2020 while Steve watched fellow melon farmers'
crops burn up under a brutal summer sun that outpaced
center pivot systems, he was able to pinpoint what was
needed and more importantly when on the melon beds. As
yield fell off in other parts of the south and Midwest due to
the extreme heat, Hornersville became Watermelon City,
U.S.A. for the national market. Steve's luck had flipped
from his first year after college when he began farming his
own land in 1980.
" That was the year I graduated, and we had a great
drought - didn't even make a crop, " he recalls. " Interest
was 18% to 20%, and we didn't make enough to even pay
the interest back, so I started way behind the eight ball. "
Although deep in melon country, Steve was the first of
his family to grow them commercially. He started with a
20-acre field, and quickly realized that economies of scale
were the only way to make so much manual work profitable.
As other farmers got out of the watermelon game or
sold land because they had no family to follow them, Steve
grew his operation. Soon, he needed the storage space and
loading dock to accommodate roughly 50,000 to 70,000
watermelons per acre that might be picked and boxed in a
single day.
" With watermelons you've gotta average them, because
one year will be boom and the next year will be bust, but
when you're planting them you never know, " Steve says.
" It's all about revenue per acre. "
Farms with big acreage hire professional picking crews
who follow the harvest north, beginning in Florida in the
early spring and ending in Michigan from late summer
into early fall. Working in teams, the pickers tackle a fresh
field of melons with speed and precision. A small group
leads the pack with machetes in hand, rapidly eyeing

Rural Missouri - July 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Rural Missouri - July 2022

Contents
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - Cover1
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - Cover2
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - Contents
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 4
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 5
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 6
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 7
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 8
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 9
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Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 11
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Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 14
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Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 18
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 19
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 20
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 21
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Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 30
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 31
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Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 33
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 34
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 35
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 36
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 37
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 38
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 39
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 40
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 41
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 42
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 43
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Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 45
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 46
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 47
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Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 49
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 50
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 51
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 52
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 53
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - 54
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - Cover3
Rural Missouri - July 2022 - Cover4
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