After a harrowing series of maneuvers needed to turn a coach bus down a narrow gravel road with 4-foot-deep ditches on either side, attendees on the Conservation Technology Information Center’s 2024 Conservation in Action Tour arrived at Ellis Bell’s century farm.
Bell’s Family Farm has been operating since 1878 in Forrest City, Ark., which is about 45 minutes west of Memphis. Bell, the farm’s current owner, is a member of the Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame.
Stepping off the bus, it’s clear that I’m not in the Corn Belt anymore. Fields flooded for rice surround Bell’s shop, which houses dozens of donuts this morning and Bell’s small plane. I’ll soon learn that Bell used to fly the plane between Forrest City and St. Louis, Mo., daily to run both his St. Louis insurance business and the family farm.
Farming Legacy
Bell, who had moved to St. Louis to run his business, came back to the farm in 1972, making him the fourth generation to farm the land. At the tour, he talked about the century farm’s legacy, started by Bell’s great-great-grandfather Joseph Duty, and shared an article about the family history written by Wayne Young, one of Duty’s great-great-grandsons.
According to the article, Duty served in the Civil War as a member of the U.S. Colored Infantry who fought for the Union. After the war, Duty eventually bought 83 acres of land northwest of Forrest City to farm and moved there with his wife. Members of the following generations continued Duty’s legacy as farmers and added more land to the original 83 acres. By the time Bell returned to the farm, the family owned 459 acres.
Today, Bell grows rice, corn, milo, wheat, oats and soybeans on majority irrigated ground. Several hundred of the acres are no-tilled, depending on the year and the crop. Almost 100% of the acres are aerially seeded to cover crops every year.
Bell says conservation practices and programs have always been attractive options because he wanted to farm fewer acres more productively. In addition to no-till and cover crops, he’s implemented nutrient management practices; participated in edge of field monitoring with the NRCS; used irrigation water management, leveling and pipelines; and diversified his cropping rotation to address water quality and quantity, soil quality, soil erosion, plant health and energy usage.
“I've had just about everything you can name as far as what's offered to keep the nutrients on the land and make it productive,” Bell says. “I didn't ever want to own a whole lot of land. I wanted the land that I have to be very productive, and so far, it has been very productive by taking advantage of the various programs offered through NRCS and the Farm Service agents.
“Some of my land is highly erodible. That's why we do those practices because we want to save our top soil, keep it from washing away, and keep the nutrients on the land, rather than having them run off into the river.”
Diversifying Agriculture
Throughout his farming career, Bell served as a champion for conservation and farmers who were often underserved by state and federal agriculture agencies.
Michael Sullivan, the Arkansas state conservationist, says Bell promoted the state’s StrikeForce Initiative, a program that helped the NRCS reach farmers who had never worked with the agency before, and used his farm as a model to showcase conservation practices. Thanks to Bell’s efforts, the NRCS could offer these farmers technical and financial assistance through conservation plans.
“The initiative was a huge success, due in part to Mr. Bell’s leadership, helping to increase assistance to historically underserved producers by a factor of ten from 2010 to 2015,” Sullivan wrote in a letter nominating Bell for the Arkansas Agricultural Hall of Fame.
Bell also invested time in St. Louis and at home to connect more African Americans to agriculture. His nonprofit, Bell AgTech, and the Bell Agriscience Pipeline taught middle, high school and college students about careers in agriculture. The pipeline program connects students with internships, mentorship and scholarships, too.
“Most Afro-American people are consumers and not producers,” Bell says. “I felt like we should have more to do with producing our own food.”
Bell started out by going into St. Louis public schools to talk to kids about agriculture. He says many didn’t know where their food came from and had no idea what agriculture was about, let alone the career opportunities that it offers. In the beginning, he says it was difficult to change that.
“I didn't have the tools to work with to actually convince them that agriculture was a worthy operation,” Bell says. “In most of the magazines that I read, when there were grants going on in the metropolitan areas, you couldn't even apply for it if you were so many miles away from a 250-acre farm. Nobody in the metropolitan area fit that description, so therefore, there were no grants ever given to them in any kind of way as far as agriculture is concerned.”
Bell says that’s somewhat changed now, referencing a story he shared in this emotional Farm Credit video about attending a Monsanto shareholders meeting. At the meeting, stockholders were testifying about how Monsanto’s growing stocks had affected their lives. Bell felt compelled to stand up. He told the board that in the magazines he read, he saw how they were helping white children, but he didn’t see them helping Black kids. After Bell finished talking, the CEO told him not to leave so they could talk.
“That changed a lot of things as far as what was going on in the minority community,” Bell says.
Bell went on to start his nonprofit with the support of Monsanto and later organizations like the American Soybean Association. While he was in St. Louis, he operated a food distribution program that provided food for thousands of people. The nonprofit later evolved into the Bell’s Agriscience mentorship program.
I highly encourage you to watch the video above and hear Bell’s own emotional recollection of the origins of his nonprofit work and the challenges he’s encountered as a Black farmer.
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