Ty Woodard
South Carolina Farmer of the Year 2024
Ty Woodard, of Woodard Farms, Inc., is a third-generation diversified farmer and agribusiness owner in Darlington County. Ty’s grandfather, Frank Woodard, Jr., always dreamed of returning to his agricultural roots after his parents’ Latta farm became a casualty of the Great Depression in the 1930s. When a local plot of land came up for sale in 1962, he bought it, eventually rented more acreage, and began Woodard Farms along with his full-time job as a route salesman.
Today, Ty, his father, Frankie Woodard, III, and Ty’s brother, Wes, partner in the family-owned operation that was incorporated in 1980 and now grows peanuts, cotton, corn, soybeans, timber, and beef cattle on over 5800 acres of rented and owned land. All three Woodard men are Clemson University graduates. Frankie has a 1979 BS degree in Agronomy; Wes has a 2004 BS degree in Agricultural Mechanization; Ty has a 2007 BS degree in Biological Sciences.
Ty said, “My older brother and I grew up on the farm, working from the time we could hold a tractor wheel steady. I spent my high school and college summers working on the farm but didn’t feel the call to come back full-time until I got away to Clemson. After graduation in 2008, I began full-time farming. Later that same year I married my wife, Tracy.” Hailing from Lexington, SC, Tracy earned her degree in 2008 in Graphic Communications with a minor in Business from Clemson University, where the two met through a mutual friend.
Ty said, “We’ve been tremendously blessed on our farm and in our family—we now have Tate, age 11, and twins, Tobin and Tyson, age 8—and have enjoyed many bountiful years on the farm. Besides my father, my brother, and myself as owners, we have four full-time employees and currently one to two H2A and seasonal workers.”
With the continued implementation of technology and sustainable growing methods over the years, crop yields have continued to improve. In 2022, Woodard Farms had the highest peanut yield in the state and set personal records in corn and peanuts. Ty also helps manage 120 head of beef cattle and over 2000 acres of timber.
In 2018, Ty and his wife Tracy began an agribusiness called Covered in Cotton that cultivates and crafts 100 percent locally grown cotton products—throw blankets, baby blankets, hand towels, and table linens—made exclusively from cotton grown on the family farm.
As Tracy noted, “The whole idea for Covered in Cotton came from a dream the Lord gave me in 2017. Not only were we supposed to make cotton products from our own cotton, but we also had a mission inspired by our then-newborn son Tobin’s life-threatening bout with bacterial meningitis in 2015. During a lengthy hospital stay and surgery, one of the nurses gifted us a comforting blanket—a gesture of kindness we never forgot.” She added, “A unique feature of this enterprise is that it is the result of a nearly 500-mile round-trip journey through the Carolinas, from a South Carolina gin to a yarn spinner and plyer in North Carolina and back to our facility on the farm for packing and shipping.”
An online store (www.coveredincotton.com) is responsible for around 90 percent of sales whose growth necessitated the building of a large dedicated order fulfillment center on the farm. Tracy said, “Our ‘Cotton with a Cause’ mission includes donating one throw to a local children’s hospital for every ten we sell and one baby blanket to a local family ministry for every ten we sell. Since 2018, we’ve donated over 1300 blankets to families in South Carolina and beyond and shipped our products to every state in America.”
In 2012, Ty also started a small beef processing venture to deliver flash frozen and vacuum-sealed beef products to customers on a bulk and individual basis. He said, “This enterprise connects our community to our farm and provides an avenue for agricultural education and building relationships. We also manage a private hunting preserve that acts as another revenue stream and helps promote genetic diversity of the local wildlife.”
As for marketing of Woodard Farms’ crops, Ty said, “We’ve used a marketing cooperative in the past but now we sell our own cotton crop, working closely with our cotton gin to research all the market factors. We’ve also added six grain bins since 2008 to store 172,000 bushels of grains, along with a loop system for loading and unloading, a wet bin, and a dryer. These improvements allow us to store additional bushels, dry, and transport grains when markets are most favorable. We also invested in our own trucking operation to haul our grains.”
Woodard-grown peanuts are contracted with multiple local peanut buyers who market the crop worldwide. As for the beef cattle, Ty said, “The most functional and profitable channel has been the Beef Quality Assurance Program through a nearby livestock market. It provides a premium for my commitment to the overall health and investment in my herd.”
Ty says, “We try to keep something growing on the land and work toward our goal of minimum till practices whenever possible. We plant using strip-till and incorporate cover crops for nutrient benefits and erosion control.” Other conservation techniques include precision application of fertilizer, swath control on spray and planting applications, GPS technology on tractors, and precision soil sampling. In 2023, Woodard Farms enrolled in the Climate-Smart Grown in South Carolina program through Clemson University and South Carolina State University.
Ty commented, “One of the most urgent challenges to agriculture in our state now is the preservation of working agricultural land. To that end, I intend to invest in additional tracts of land in the future and hope to provide opportunities for our children to join the farm’s operations by continuing to diversify, increase H2A labor, partner with programs like the US Cotton Trust Protocol and Climate-Smart Grown in SC, and explore new ways to scout crops and monitor cattle with advances in drone technology.”
Weather has been especially at odds with this part of South Carolina since 2015. That’s when a thousand-year flood hit and eliminated the harvest of all Woodard Farms’ planted cotton. The next year brought hurricanes and more flooding. Hurricanes Florence and Michael roared through in 2018 and destroyed half the cotton crop. In 2020, Ty reported, “Due to the wet conditions that spring, we couldn’t get 400 acres planted, and 400 of the acres we had already planted didn’t come up.”
One way Ty responded to these challenges was to get involved in promoting and supporting the state’s Farm Aid Bill, making legislative contacts, and spotlighting awareness on social media. In hands-on fashion, he prepared for any future flooding by clearing away ditch banks where water flow was restricted and making improvements to existing drainage tiles. He said, “I diversified risk with earlier maturing varieties of soybeans and peanuts and replaced grain sorghum with corn acreage to avoid a late harvest season.”
The problem of a declining workforce faced by so many farmers hasn’t spared Woodard Farms either. Ty recalled, “In 2019, I created our first internship program that brought onboard a college student who wanted to learn more about row crop production. We hired him full-time after graduating from Clemson in 2020.” He has also initiated and led the process of contracting South African labor through the H2A program.
On the beef herd side of things, Ty obtained financial and technical assistance from the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program to install cross fencing, water troughs, water lines, and sprigging additional pastureland. He said, “I also partnered with Purina Animal Nutrition to improve feed and reproductive efficiency. And I’m happy to report We’ve made great strides in improving overall herd health with these changes.”
On the county level, Ty has served as president of the Darlington County Young Farmer and Agribusiness Association, vice president and president of the Darlington County Farm Bureau board, chair of the Darlington County Farm Bureau Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee and is currently on the board of and serving as a coach for a Florence Little League baseball team. On the state level, he won the award for South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation Achievement in Agriculture and was elected to the South Carolina State Cotton Board in 2023. On the national level, Ty was selected as Ross Chastain’s Ag to Asphalt featured farmer.
On the county level, Tracy Woodard currently serves as a Darlington County Clemson Extension Advisory Board member; a co-chair of the Darlington County Farm Bureau Women’s Leadership Committee; a church volunteer, and a coordinator for Food Check-Out Week food drive events. On the state level, she is a member of the South Carolina Farm Bureau Women’s Leadership State Committee and was given the South Carolina Farm Bureau Grass Root All-Star Legislative Advocacy award in 2023. On the national level, Tracy has been an American Farm Bureau Federation ACE Summit participant and has been featured in Successful Farming magazine’s “In Her Field” article and podcast in 2023.
Alongside work duties, the Woodard family has a great love for sports, especially baseball, which Ty coaches. Living between the mountains and the ocean, they enjoy trips to each when time allows. Ty recalled, “In recent years, we’ve been privileged to take two trips to Israel where, as it’s said, that country takes the Bible from black and white to color. They were truly inspiring experiences.” Locally, they are active members of NewSpring Church in Florence.
Farming has given Ty Woodard a different perspective on life from what he envisioned as a young college student. “Growing up, farming was not my dream. But, moving away from the farm in college and then experiencing the Lord’s transformation of my heart, I found that this is what I was supposed to do all along. It is an honor to steward the land that not only supports my family but also provides the food, fuel and fiber for the world.” The lessons of persistence and grit have seen him through many unexpected challenges. “When you’re on the brink of being overwhelmed by tough times and are able to get through them with faith and determination,” he said, “you can find meaning and joy on the other side.”
Ty Woodard was nominated South Carolina Farmer of the Year by Clemson Cooperative Extension’s David B. DeWitt, CCA, Area Row Crop Agent, Lee, Sumter, and Kershaw – New and Emerging Crops. He said, “I am delighted to nominate Woodard Farms this year. The entire family is dedicated to sound, modern farming practices, and they are committed to conservation. Ty and Tracy enhance their row crop and cattle operation with Covered in Cotton, and their strong family story deserves to be celebrated. They are excellent farmers who are always willing to work with Extension programs. They also host different events for Agent tours, Women in Ag conferences, and teachers for Farm Bureau Ag in the Classroom project. I’m proud to have collaborated with the Woodard family for many years.”
Harper Family Holdings, the Alabama Farmers Federation, Arkansas Farm Bureau, Florida Farm Bureau, Georgia Farm Bureau, North Carolina Farm Bureau, Tennessee Farm Bureau, and Virginia Farm Bureau have joined together to generously sponsor the 2024 program.
State winners of the Sunbelt Expo award will receive a $2,500 cash award and an expense-paid trip to the Sunbelt Expo from the sponsors. A vest from the sponsors will be given to each state winner and nominator. The Moultrie Colquitt Co. Chamber of Commerce will give each state winner a local keepsake.
The state winners are now eligible for the $15,000 cash prize awarded to the overall winner by the sponsors. Massey Ferguson North America will provide each state winner with a gift package and the overall winner with the use of a Massey Ferguson tractor for a year or 250 hours (whichever comes first).A jacket will be given to the overall winner from the sponsors. Hays LTI will award the overall winner with a HAYS Smoker/Grill and the overall winner will receive a Henry Repeating Arms American Farmer Tribute Edition rifle from Reinke Irrigation. In addition, the state winners and overall winner will receive a diesel additive prize package from Howes Products.
The Sunbelt Expo is coordinating the Southeastern Farmer of the Year awards for the 34th consecutive year. A total of $1,324,000 in cash awards and other honors have been awarded to 296 southeastern farmers since the award was initiated in 1990.