Farming: A Family Affair in the Mississippi Delta

A fifth-generation farmer, Thomas Neblett shares the importance of passion, sustainability and trusting your instincts.

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2024 / From his earliest days, Thomas Neblett could usually be found on a farm - often out among the soybeans, corn, cotton and rice fields of his family's 9,000 acres in the Mississippi Delta.

Foto: Accesswire

Today, he is up before dawn and working well into the evening hours managing his own farming operation Sunrise Farms Partnership, with approximately 3,600 acres in Jonestown, Mississippi. But it wasn't always a given that Neblett would go into the family business. His father Rives Neblett was a successful attorney and wasn't hands-on in his farming operation the way many farm owners may be. The younger Neblett knew he was free to explore the world and discover his own passion and way once he graduated from high school, but that the farm would always be there.

"We're a little different in that my dad was a farmer, landowner, a lawyer, a real estate guy, commodity trader and he didn't have his hands directly in the pie on the farm," said Thomas Neblett. "He let me know you don't have to drive a tractor and be out on that farm if that's not what you want to do. And he let it be known early on that he didn't want me to feel like I had to farm or that that was what he wanted me to do."

When Thomas Neblett graduated from high school, he took the path that many Americans follow, and he headed off to college. While a freshman at the University of Mississippi, Thomas went into kidney failure and needed an emergency transplant. That confirmed his growing belief that college was not the path to his future.

I knew then that farming was what I wanted to do - I can tell you for a fact - but this land we own and what my family has been doing for four generations, I think is literally in my blood.
Thomas Neblett

Farming in His Blood

"School was not for me and by the time I got to college, I was over it," noted Thomas Neblett. "I knew then that farming was what I wanted to do - I can tell you for a fact - but this land we own and what my family has been doing for four generations, I think is literally in my blood."

His father, Rives, would agree. His own grandfather, also a lawyer, launched the farming family dynasty in the late 1920s when he began acquiring farmland while practicing law. And on Thomas' mother's side of the family, the farming gene reaches back to his grandfather Charlie Lowrance who was a successful farmer and ginner in Arkansas.