If I told you our family farm sustainability story did not start with grand ideas about saving the planet, would you believe me? Maybe, maybe not; but that is the absolute truth. Rewind your mind to 1980. My mother, a farm girl, was living in Dallas, TX, and working for Delta Airlines. Married to a “cool” college professor and newly pregnant, she and her non-farm husband decided to move back to her family farm in northeast Louisiana for a few years to decide their next move in life.

I was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1981, and that changed everything. Faced with the reality that there was no real future being a farm laborer for his father-in-law, my Dad realized the only real way to make it - was on his own. Perhaps ignorance truly is bliss. Not many people would have started farming in the 1980s if they knew about the crisis that was upon them. Nevertheless, my Dad set out to farm new ground that my grandfather purchased and cleared of trees. This was not the pristine river silt ground that existed on the rest of the sprawling acreage known as Somerset Plantation.

It was on that stump-infested, heavy clay ground that the sustainability story really started for Hardwick Planting Company. Faced with either failing or succeeding, my father set out to do more with less. That, after all, is the basis of sustainability in agriculture. We laugh today at the pure absurdity of the situation. My father didn’t know a corn plant from a cotton plant in 1981, and he was going to farm for goodness' sakes. When you know nothing, you really are willing to try anything.

This is not a feel sorry for us story; we have been successful for the past 42 years. Dad, or Jay, as he is well known in our industry, thought differently. Not necessarily to go against the grain, but because he had to. He “did” sustainability way before it was trendy. Starting with cover crops and minimum tillage in the early 1990s - simply because it saved money in other areas. Sustainability then was more about survival than making yourself feel good about the environment. This is not to say the environment is not important. It is now and always has been for us. After all, we live where we work. Few people have the privilege to be surrounded by God’s beauty both at home and work. The point is that sustainability is not new to the American farmer; it’s new to the American consumer.

Fast-forward to today. Jay is retired, and we have transformed our sustainability story from surviving to thriving. Advancements in technology have allowed us to become more efficient and push the envelope in our sustainable practices. We plant cover crops on nearly 80 percent of our acres and have reduced synthetic fertilizers by nearly 50 percent while increasing our use of natural fertilizers. Yearly soil samples guide our fertility needs, and state-of-the-art GPS guided equipment prescriptively apply inputs where they are needed.

In January of 2022, we became the first farm in the United States to be certified regenerative by Control Union’s regenagri program, and we now sell regenerative U.S. Cotton to brands and spinning mills around the world. As the world’s population demands more transparency in their fiber, food, and fuel, we can meet that demand by providing a clear window into the world of sustainable production agriculture.

If you ask five people the definition of sustainability, you will likely get five different answers. To our family, it means responsibly meeting the needs of the present while improving the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Not only must we be environmentally sustainable, but we must also remain economically sustainable. A wise farmer I know once told me, “How do you expect me to be part of the sustainable solution if I’m not here to participate.”

I am the fourth generation of my family to farm our land. By most definitions, we are sustainable, as we have beaten the odds of survival. However, I prefer not to see the future as such. Survival and innovation are what previous generations accomplished for us. I see us as standing on the shoulders of those pioneers to build our version of success.