October 2004
Commercial Agriculture

(Left to right) Southern States Field Sales Associate Pat Williamson joins Stuart Sanderson and Chad and Mike Henderson at Henderson Farms’ corn test plot, planted with Southern States varieties.

Plot in a Refuge
The Hendersons test Southern States corn varieties on land that is home to dozens of wildlife species.

For seven decades, the Henderson family of north Alabama has farmed land by the Tennessee River. Some of the 3,500 acres on the crop farm have included river bottomland leased from the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge

“We’ve got a little of everything on this land, including plenty of deer and turkeys, some bobcats and in the backwater bays, alligators,” says Mike Henderson, whose father, G.W., first farmed there in 1949.

On a small portion of the refuge land sits a 30-acre corn seed test plot. This is the Hendersons’ effort to select the corn varieties that will produce best for them.

“They planted 14 corn varieties in their test plot last summer,” notes Pat Williamson, a Southern States field sales associate out of Athens, Ala.

Stuart Sanderson, Mike Henderson’s nephew, says, “We don’t plant any corn on a large scale until we’ve proved the varieties in our test plot.”

Mike goes with Southern States because of competitive prices and his relationship with Williamson. “Pat never tries to push something on us that we don’t need. He comes to his job with a farmer’s perspective,” Mike says.

And the proof is in the yields. In 2003 the farm averaged 193.4 bushels on 450 acres of corn.

The farm regularly places high in the annual National Corn Growers Association corn yield contest.

Results from their 2003 test plot led the Hendersons to plant two of the co-op’s varieties, SS 842 RR and SS 900BT, in 2004. The SS 842 RR did well in the moist, humid river-bottom fields, where weed pressure is intense.

“Because we’re trying to make a living at this for several families, we have to go about the farming business seriously,” observes Chad. That’s another reason Henderson Farms does business with Southern States.