Farming in a rapidly urbanizing area has its challenges, and Jerry Ray of Tullahoma, Tenn., has found a way to make farming work in such a challenging environment. He rents much of the land he farms, and the farms are spread out across parts of three counties. This requires him to move equipment over narrow, winding roads from one farm to another.

Another challenge is finding land to lease. Buying land to farm is not an option, given current land prices in his area ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 per acre.

“My biggest field is only 150 acres,” he says. “Some fields I farm are as small as five acres.”

He has taken on these challenges and is now farming close to 2,000 acres. This includes 1,940 acres of rented land and only 60 acres of owned land. His crops include 600 acres of corn, 300 acres of full season soybeans, 300 acres of doublecropped soybeans planted after wheat and about 200 acres devoted to hay production. He also has about 200 acres in pastures. He maintains a 40-head beef cattle herd. In addition, he and another farmer buy cattle for backgrounding.

As a result of his successful 30-year career as a diversified farmer, Ray has been selected as the 2008 Tennessee winner of the Swisher Sweets/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year award. Ray now joins nine other state winners from the Southeast as finalists for the award. The overall winner will be announced on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at the Sunbelt Ag Expo farm show in Moultrie, Ga.

He’s proud of his crop yields, 140 bushels per acre for corn, 45 bushels per acre for full season soybeans, 35 bushels per acre for doublecropped soybeans, 70 bushels per acre for wheat and two and a half tons per acre for both wheat hay and grass hay.

“In the cattle backgrounding operation, we buy 550-pound bulls that we castrate and dehorn, and then take them up to 850 to 900 pounds before we sell them,” he says. “We use video auction sales to market the cattle that we sell in tractor-trailer sized lots. We’re backgrounding about 500 head this year, and next year we plan to background about 1,000 head.”

He figures that selling the backgrounded cattle on the video auctions gains him a premium of about five cents per pound over what he’d earn by selling at traditional auction markets.

He also cuts and bales hay for others, but rising diesel fuel costs have affected this enterprise.

“Last year, I charged $18 per bale to cut hay, rake it, and roll it into a bale,” he says. “Because of increased fuel prices, I’m now charging $25 per bale.”

Ray has adopted new technology such as no-till planting with variable rate seeding, a global positioning system for his sprayer and yield monitors for his grain harvesting equipment.

He also has invested in grain storage facilities.

“Grain storage has paid off,” he says. “For instance, corn was priced at $3 per bushel at harvest, but I was able to get prices of $5 and $6 per bushel later on by having storage. I put up a 20,000-bushel storage facility three years ago, and have a total of 45,000 bushels in storage capacity now. I’ve just signed up for a state cost-sharing program that, if approved, would allow me to build another 20,000 bushels in new storage facilities.”

Though he doesn’t grow poultry, the chicken business is big in his area of southeastern Tennessee. When he can get it, he uses chicken litter as a low-cost fertilizer. And because of the chickens in the area, he has enjoyed some good corn prices.

“We have one of the highest corn markets in Tennessee,” he says. “The poultry companies buy grain from the Midwest and ship it in by rail. But the poultry companies have little storage capacity, and at times, they will pay good prices for grain when they are short. I sold my last batch of corn for $6.23 per bushel. I’ve also contracted some of my 2008 corn crop for $6.25 per bushel.”