The New Face Of Farming

BY FAIMON A. ROBERTS III

Baton Rouge Advocate

Meryl Kennedy's story begins in a truck, riding with her father around her family's rice farm as a child growing up in northeast Louisiana.

''He loved to take me out there,'' she recalled. ''Drive around for hours and hours.''

Elton Kennedy loved farming, loved the fields and loved the rice business he had built on land he first farmed in 1964. As the father of four daughters, he wanted them to be involved.

Meryl Kennedy, the youngest, didn't share her father's love of the fields or his ''dusty little office in Mer Rouge.''

She left. Her first stop was boarding school in Virginia. The next was the University of Georgia. She majored in international relations - the kind of thing you study if your plan is to get far, far away from a 500-person town in Morehouse Parish where the flat expanses of farms and timberlands stretch to the Arkansas state line.

Her next stop was the University of Oxford, for a master's degree in Latin American studies. But her father had a card to play.

He'd pay for Oxford, but only if she came back to Morehouse Parish and worked for him for the summer.

And that's where the plot turns.

Meryl Kennedy took the deal for a summer, and she watched her father work. One minute, he was discussing farming techniques. The next, he was talking to traders in the Chicago commodities pits, hedging production based on changes in global markets. It was an eye-opening experience.

''For a 21-year old, that was very exciting,'' she said.

Meryl Kennedy never made it to England.

After starting as her father's assistant, she's now the president of a family agriculture business that's grown well beyond farming and rice drying. At 34, she's also become one of Louisiana's most prominent agriculture industry leaders.

Kennedy is chair of the USA Rice Millers' Association. She's an independent director of Origin Bank and serves on the boards of several other state and national business and industry groups, where she's often the youngest person and the only woman in the room.

''It's a little hard to believe that I am the first woman'' to chair the Rice Millers' Association, she said.

Kennedy is also a vocal advocate for farming and rural issues, and she represents a new crop of farm owners many of whom are women - who are charting a different path from the last generation.

U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Start, whose district includes Morehouse Parish, has watched Kennedy in meetings and other settings. She said Kennedy's fearlessness in mostly older and predominantly male settings is ''inspiring'' and said she is a master of delivering ''sugar on a knife.''

''When she spoke, she commanded the room,'' Letlow said. ''She had no trepidation.''

Kennedy's office is in a renovated century-old house a couple blocks from downtown Mer Rouge. Its expansive front porch looks out over farmlands that evoke the agricultural era of her father.

But everything else signifies the arrival of the millennial generation to the farming industry.

The office is painted in crisp white and gray. A modern white executive chair sits behind the simple wooden desk with a microphone attached, where she records episodes of an occasional podcast called ''Rice Up Your Bowl.''

One wall is decorated with a giant American flag - she describes herself as patriotic - and on the others hang a painting of Wonder Woman and a picture of her infant daughter bestride the moon.

''Because women have already conquered the Earth,'' Kennedy said with a laugh.

She has a professionally designed website that markets her brands and includes links to her social media accounts.

And instead of bib overalls, she's wearing jeans, short black boots and a green leather jacket that wouldn't look out of place in a Magazine Street boutique.

Kennedy's business is rooted in rice, but her time in agriculture has been defined by expanding into adjacent businesses with greater growth potential.

In 2012, she helped her father found Kennedy Rice Mill, building a sprawling complex in Mer Rouge that processes millions of pounds of rice every year and generates $70 million in annual revenue.

When a West Monroe cookie dough factory nearly closed in 2016, Kennedy bought it. Neighbors LLC is now one of the leading manufacturers of cookie dough for fundraisers.

It employs 150 people, about the same number as the rice mill.

In 2019, Kennedy and her sisters launched 4Sisters Rice, which is sustainably farmed, organic rice that's sold in more than 5,000 stores. And early in the pandemic when supply chains seized up, they built a directto- consumer website in a manner of weeks.

Her success has not gone unnoticed. She and her sisters have been featured in promotional materials by

Kellogg's, in Southern Living magazine and in several industry publications.

During a tour of her rice mill and interviews to discuss her advocacy work, Kennedy allowed that, at times, the knife's edge Letlow referenced gets a bit sharper. Some have told her that she resembles Beth Dutton, the flinty daughter of Kevin Costner's character in the hit television show ''Yellowstone,'' who is known for her caustic, ruthless manner.

Some of that was on display in September at a meeting of state economic development leaders and local businesses in West Monroe. Officials fielded mostly congenial questions and offered information about programs that were available to aid rural parishes.

But little had been said about helping parishes fix their own crumbling infrastructure.

Kennedy rose to speak.

''I didn't hear anything today about rural roads,'' she said. ''So that's maybe something y'all can help us focus on.''

She credits her father for forcing her into situations where she had to learn to hold her own, she said.

''Nobody should really be intimidated to speak their mind,'' she said.

Kennedy is part of an increasing number of women taking leadership roles in agriculture.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's farm census for 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the number of women in farming in Louisiana went up more than 20%, to more than 15,000, from five years before.

Denise Cannatella, who with her husband and son helps run her family's 4,000acre farm in St. Landry Parish, has seen the changes come over the past few decades.

Cannatella said the annual Women in Agriculture conference in Louisiana, which she helps organize, has grown from about 150 or 200 attendees in 2017 to more than 500 earlier this year.

''When I first got married, it was mostly a man's world,'' she said.

Amelia Kent, who runs a 1,400-acre cattle ranch in East Feliciana Parish, has also seen the evolution.

''When I started showing up with my own pickup and trailer, you could see some men pick their jaws off the floor,'' the 39-year-old Kent said.

Like Kennedy, she hasn't shied away from leadership roles, serving on the Louisiana Beef Industry Council and on a national beef board. She's currently on the Farm Bureau Livestock Advisory Committee.

''I can't tell you how many times I go to a meeting and I am the only woman there,'' she said. ''But the chances that I am chairing that meeting are pretty high.''

Kennedy calls the increase in women in agriculture ''an incredible wave.''

She credits her father - who took her on those long weekend drives and made that deal to fund her academic ambitions - with pushing her in the right direction.

''He gave me the opportunity to chart my own path,'' she said. ''There's no way I would be here without him.''

Now she's passing those lessons along. Some male farmers she knows have asked her to mentor their daughters who are interested in getting into the business.

''It's exciting to see,'' she said.