|
NC SweetPotato Grower Profile:
Bobby Ham - Ham Farms and Produce Co. – Snow Hill, NC
 |
|
When Bobby Ham returned home to farm with his father, Woody, and brother, Alan, following graduation from East Carolina University and an off-farm auditing position with Texas Pipeline Gas in 1975, the Hams’ 70 acres of tobacco was the base crop of their 200-acre farming operation.
Today, Ham Farms and Produce Co. is now centered around 7,000 acres in three counties. Sweet potatoes are by far its largest crop, growing 2,800 acres in 2005. The Hams still raise a lot of tobacco but are also raising 600 acres of bell peppers, 400 acres of cucumbers, and smaller fields of cabbage, cantaloupe, watermelons, beans, and peas.
Under the watchful eyes of Bobby, Ham Farms and Produce Co. has now become known for its dedication to quality produce, customer satisfaction, and food safety. Alan now manages the farming operation now that their father has retired.
How did they come this far? In the early ‘80s, the Hams became some of the first tobacco farmers to start growing vegetables, adding more land to grow pickles and sweet potatoes. From their start growing pickling cucumbers, the Hams expanded into growing specialty peppers - jalapenos, cherries, and bananas. Their expansion led to a bell pepper canning contract with Allen Canning Co., which also became an outlet for the Hams’ sweet potato crop. By the end of the 1980s they were farming 5,000 to 6,000 acres of vegetables and tobacco.
|
 |
|
In 1992, the Hams plowed their energies into building a sweet potato packing house to market their own brands. Ham’s Yams is one the company’s premium labels, offering other labels for different sizes of sweet potatoes: Carolina’s Best, Baker’s Price, Sweet Carolinas, and jumbo and commercial grades of Beauregard and Covington sweet potato varieties.
The Hams distribute their produce on a year-round basis and sell directly to chains, foodservice accounts, and through brokers. They employ 75 workers year round, surging to 300 laborers at peak season. Alan grows more than 70 percent of the sweet potatoes Ham Farms sells. But to handle the volume required of his customers, Bobby also buys from another 20 to 30 growers in the area. Today, Ham Farms sells sweet potatoes throughout the US, UK, Europe, and Canada.
|
 |
|
Although the bulk of the company’s sales go to the retail sector, Ham Farms, like many other shippers, is seeing fast growth in the foodservice industry. And with his new packing equipment, Bobby is ready to meet the rigid demands of foodservice distributors. A new computerized sizer makes Ham Farms one of the most technologically advanced sweet potato farms in NC. The state-of-the-art equipment can sort sweet potatoes by length, diameter, weight, grade, and color. And, the Hams were among the state’s first sweet potato growers to use micropropogation to assure high quality and a uniformly-sized crop
|
While new machinery allows them to make a consistent, quality pack, Ham Farms has taken another step to reassure buyers, particularly foodservice customers, that safety in its production chain is strictly controlled. Three forced-air coolers can control temperatures for 15 semi-trailer loads, and half of Ham Farms 1,000,000 bushels of storage capacity is climate controlled. Ham Farm’s formally implemented shipping procedures allow them to trace a box on the dock back through the packing line, into the field, and down to the worker who harvested the sweet potatoes.
Also new to Ham Farms is a bagging machine that allows them to market 3-and 5-pound net mesh bags with colorful graphics and recipes printed on each bag. Consumers like the convenience of Ham’s tray-wrapped sweet potatoes, which can be put right in the microwave. Plus, the produce wrap keeps the potatoes fresher longer. Bobby recently added individually wrapped sweet potatoes to their pre-packaged line.
Bobby, a long-time director of the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission and leader of other vegetable industry groups, says, “North Carolina sweet potatoes get a lot of industry attention, largely because of our excellent promotions through the media—radio, television, the Internet, and printed publications. As a result, produce and foodservice industry consumers know they can get a consistent, year-round supply of our highly nutritious product.”
As he reflects upon the past and looks to the future, Bobby says of Ham Farms and Produce, “We feel good we’ve diversified into produce and are thankful that we’ve been able to market everything we’ve been able to grow.”
|
