COMMUNITY // Agricultural
Advocates for Agricultural
by Janee Miller - 12.01.2023
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The KKAC Organization is a Little Rock-based nonprofit organization founded by the Peer Farm Group in 2015 consisting of Wilbur Peer, Sr., Andre Peer, Rickey Peer, Alvin Peer, Sr., and Edgar Peer, Jr. It is named after the grandchildren of Wilbur Peer: Kaleb, Korey, Andre, and Cole, and primarily aims to educate minority youth about production agriculture and agriculture business. It conducts outreach to minority farmers, ranchers, and landowners on estate planning, land management, heir’s property issues, and wealth-building opportunities through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) programs. KKAC provides free lectures, demos, and scholarships for rural agriculture communities, minority farmers/veterans, and students.
Wilbur Peer, Executive Director of KKAC, is an Arkansas native born and raised in Lee County, and C.O.O. of KKAC, Willard Ryland, was born and raised in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. These gentlemen have had experience working with the federal government, establishing and maintaining several nonprofit organizations, farming their land, and facilitating agricultural outreach and consulting. URBANE had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Peer, Mr. Ryland, and Ms. Destiny Haygood, KKAC’s Marketing and Communications Director, to discuss the current work of their organization and how they plan to expand their reach in the coming years. |
Describe the importance of educating this upcoming generation of black youth on production agriculture and agriculture business.
Mr. Peer: We realized that young and older black people don’t appreciate farming as a business. In my mind, we see it as being akin to slave labor - picking and chopping cotton. That’s far from the truth. I always say this: if you are a farmer, you are a business manager. You have to know something about chemistry. You have to know something about biology and understand marketing. If you have an occupation in agriculture production, you will always be gainfully employed.
I think the estimate now is about 8 billion people on Earth. By the year 2050, it's supposed to be about 10 billion people, and we must feed them with the same amount of land. Also, if people do not understand the value of land, they will not see the importance of maintaining it, and we will continue to lose land. They took agriculture education out of our public schools and are trying to take it away from our black colleges and universities. In 1915, we had about 20 to 30 million acres of land in our community. Now, we own less than 5 million.
Mr. Ryland: I think KKAC plays a significant role in trying to encourage young people to go into agriculture careers. I've been in this business for over 50 years, and I've seen fewer African Americans in agriculture. I believe that was orchestrated. It was orchestrated from the sense that the Department of Education does not put enough emphasis on agriculture in education in schools, public schools in particular. They have devalued agricultural opportunities for students. As a result, we've had so many young people who live in the heart of the Delta that don't know where food comes from. They don’t realize we need food, water, and natural resources to survive. We don't have enough people going into these agricultural fields anymore. And that's a direct correlation from the lack of education being emphasized by institutions such as the Department of Education and in the public school system.
Can you walk me through what an in-person learning experience with Sowing Seeds looks like? Is each monthly lesson different or a continuation of the previous one?
Mr. Peer: We have a 12-month curriculum for the students. One of the items on the curriculum is understanding how to prepare budgets. We teach them a different commodity crop, how much it costs to produce it, and how much they can expect to make. We let them understand that farmers make a lot of money, but that's not every year. We teach them about the agencies that help the farmers, like the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and about flying drones and how they impact farming and soil testing. We also teach them how to dress and talk for success.
Mr. Ryland: There are several things that we expose young kids to over 12 months. One of the things that we've done is take them to different venues around the state so they can get practical experience and exposure to what agriculture is all about. They participated in actually planting a crop early in the spring. Several months later, they came back to that exact location and helped harvest the fruit from the crops that they planted. We've exposed them to business structures to show them that there's more to agriculture than just farming.
We've taken them to a distillery in Helena, Arkansas, where they've seen products like sweet potatoes grown by a family farm. Then, another branch of the family farm takes those sweet potatoes and makes vodka and gin from them. And now they're making bourbon from that exact product. And now that family has gone from the field to the table, so to speak, with a product. Those kinds of experiences we've been able to share with some of these young folks so they can understand that there are many different opportunities in agriculture.
In what ways have the organizations’ methods of educating youth on agriculture changed or improved over the years?
Mr. Peer: We think that the method that we are using is attracting more students because some of the ones that were in our program last year wanted to repeat it. We show them that the technology behind gadgets used when driving a tractor. We expose them to things that are in the real world of work.
Every year, Greenway Equipment lets us bring our students to their training facility and allow them to drive their equipment. As Mr. Ryland mentioned, we let them see how to add value to the product grown in the field. This year, they'll get to go to a rice processing facility. They will see the rice come in the raw, and when they leave, it'll be packaged and ready to be shipped to and sold at a grocery store. We let them see that agriculture production has many dimensions to it.
Share the most fulfilling part of your work.
Mr. Ryland: The most fulfilling part of this work is helping people in African-American communities understand the wealth of opportunities that are out there. We want them to understand they have the same opportunities as everyone else. The most rewarding part is giving people an opportunity to allow themselves to raise themselves higher, as far as being able to have greater wealth and more excellent living conditions. Although some things can be frustrating, we are passionate about this work.
Mr. Peer: What's rewarding to me is watching them grow. We allow them to participate in our program and give them a chance to get up and speak in front of an audience. We are trying to build character, and we are succeeding at that. That is rewarding. Whether they go into agriculture is not necessarily that important. What's important to us is that we help produce well-rounded young African Americans and remove the stereotype the public puts on us. These are bright young people, and all they need is for somebody to care about them and put a level of expectation on them. They get a chance to meet people who are in high positions, and they see that they are just human beings like you and I. Some of our students are going on. One student is attending Harvard now, and a couple of students work with John Deere.
Mr. Peer: We realized that young and older black people don’t appreciate farming as a business. In my mind, we see it as being akin to slave labor - picking and chopping cotton. That’s far from the truth. I always say this: if you are a farmer, you are a business manager. You have to know something about chemistry. You have to know something about biology and understand marketing. If you have an occupation in agriculture production, you will always be gainfully employed.
I think the estimate now is about 8 billion people on Earth. By the year 2050, it's supposed to be about 10 billion people, and we must feed them with the same amount of land. Also, if people do not understand the value of land, they will not see the importance of maintaining it, and we will continue to lose land. They took agriculture education out of our public schools and are trying to take it away from our black colleges and universities. In 1915, we had about 20 to 30 million acres of land in our community. Now, we own less than 5 million.
Mr. Ryland: I think KKAC plays a significant role in trying to encourage young people to go into agriculture careers. I've been in this business for over 50 years, and I've seen fewer African Americans in agriculture. I believe that was orchestrated. It was orchestrated from the sense that the Department of Education does not put enough emphasis on agriculture in education in schools, public schools in particular. They have devalued agricultural opportunities for students. As a result, we've had so many young people who live in the heart of the Delta that don't know where food comes from. They don’t realize we need food, water, and natural resources to survive. We don't have enough people going into these agricultural fields anymore. And that's a direct correlation from the lack of education being emphasized by institutions such as the Department of Education and in the public school system.
Can you walk me through what an in-person learning experience with Sowing Seeds looks like? Is each monthly lesson different or a continuation of the previous one?
Mr. Peer: We have a 12-month curriculum for the students. One of the items on the curriculum is understanding how to prepare budgets. We teach them a different commodity crop, how much it costs to produce it, and how much they can expect to make. We let them understand that farmers make a lot of money, but that's not every year. We teach them about the agencies that help the farmers, like the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and about flying drones and how they impact farming and soil testing. We also teach them how to dress and talk for success.
Mr. Ryland: There are several things that we expose young kids to over 12 months. One of the things that we've done is take them to different venues around the state so they can get practical experience and exposure to what agriculture is all about. They participated in actually planting a crop early in the spring. Several months later, they came back to that exact location and helped harvest the fruit from the crops that they planted. We've exposed them to business structures to show them that there's more to agriculture than just farming.
We've taken them to a distillery in Helena, Arkansas, where they've seen products like sweet potatoes grown by a family farm. Then, another branch of the family farm takes those sweet potatoes and makes vodka and gin from them. And now they're making bourbon from that exact product. And now that family has gone from the field to the table, so to speak, with a product. Those kinds of experiences we've been able to share with some of these young folks so they can understand that there are many different opportunities in agriculture.
In what ways have the organizations’ methods of educating youth on agriculture changed or improved over the years?
Mr. Peer: We think that the method that we are using is attracting more students because some of the ones that were in our program last year wanted to repeat it. We show them that the technology behind gadgets used when driving a tractor. We expose them to things that are in the real world of work.
Every year, Greenway Equipment lets us bring our students to their training facility and allow them to drive their equipment. As Mr. Ryland mentioned, we let them see how to add value to the product grown in the field. This year, they'll get to go to a rice processing facility. They will see the rice come in the raw, and when they leave, it'll be packaged and ready to be shipped to and sold at a grocery store. We let them see that agriculture production has many dimensions to it.
Share the most fulfilling part of your work.
Mr. Ryland: The most fulfilling part of this work is helping people in African-American communities understand the wealth of opportunities that are out there. We want them to understand they have the same opportunities as everyone else. The most rewarding part is giving people an opportunity to allow themselves to raise themselves higher, as far as being able to have greater wealth and more excellent living conditions. Although some things can be frustrating, we are passionate about this work.
Mr. Peer: What's rewarding to me is watching them grow. We allow them to participate in our program and give them a chance to get up and speak in front of an audience. We are trying to build character, and we are succeeding at that. That is rewarding. Whether they go into agriculture is not necessarily that important. What's important to us is that we help produce well-rounded young African Americans and remove the stereotype the public puts on us. These are bright young people, and all they need is for somebody to care about them and put a level of expectation on them. They get a chance to meet people who are in high positions, and they see that they are just human beings like you and I. Some of our students are going on. One student is attending Harvard now, and a couple of students work with John Deere.
Share the most challenging part of your work.
Mr. Peer: The most challenging part is getting the ones that don't know about us to explore.
Mr. Ryland: The most challenging thing is allowing people to grow, as Mr. Peer said earlier. We don't try to figure out how many will succeed, but we give them all we have in terms of exposure, and the rest will take care of itself. It's like that biblical scripture about raising a child. That child may leave at some point, but they always return to what they learned. We realize once they go, you know, they'll have choices to make, and we pray they'll make the right choice.
How does the organization expand its reach throughout the state and beyond?
Mr. Peer: We have good partners, and our partners are helping us to expand. As a matter of fact, with our youth program, The Nature Conservancy wants to partner with us, and the US Fish and Wildlife wants to partner with us. They want us to find the students and prepare them for their internship program. We’re going to expand because we understand how critically important it is for us to provide for our kids the things that they need that they don't get at home. We will be working with students in Lee, Phillips, Monroe, San Francis, Monroe, and Jefferson County. We will probably start taking students from Pulaski County and others as long as we have enough financial resources to accommodate the students.
We operate in six states, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina. and Kentucky. But we are hoping to expand to Kentucky and Tennessee. We intend to have a similar program to Sowing Seeds in Mississippi. Hopefully, we can start it early in 2024 because our kids are smart.
What does KKAC hope to further accomplish?
Mr. Peer: With our five-year plan, we want to create an endowment because we think the work that we are doing is vitally important to African Americans in this country who still own land. In all of the states we work in, we try to help black people understand how important it is to do proper estate planning. Every time a black person dies in America without a good estate plan, we lose wealth. There's no way around that. We plan to create an endowment so the work that we are doing will continue.
What advice would you share with someone interested in pursuing an agricultural-related career?
Mr. Peer: The first thing I would say is to get along with your relatives, particularly if you own land. The quickest way to lose land is to fight with your relatives. The second thing I would say is if you own anything, make a will or trust. If you don't have your estate plan already ready, then you are going to lose some of your wealth. The third thing I would say is if you are thinking about going into agricultural production, start slow.
What professional and personal legacy do you want to leave?
Mr. Ryland: God made the land we are utilizing, and when we die, the land is still here. We want to make sure that people are good stewards of the land God has given us and leave an inheritance for our children’s children. I've always been a part of the land; now, I’m trying to help reach others through the KKAC organization.
Mr. Peer: One crucial thing to me is helping black landowners enroll their land in agriculture conservation easement programs. That's land that the government will pay a landowner to take their land out of crop production. Enrolling in the conservation easement, you get the money and keep the land. This year will be the first year we enroll in the land that belonged to black people. That's significant because they don't have to sell the land to reach financial benefit. They can keep the land and pass it on to their children. That's one legacy that I think we are on the road to leaving. The other one is we are helping many people do proper estate plans. If they come to our office, we will write the wills and trusts for free. If we can create an endowment when Mr. Ryland and I are gone, the young people will be able to keep KKAC going. I'm going to leave some land for my kids. They may think it isn’t much, but when they get my age, they will realize the sweet spot left for them.
The KKAC Organization is happy to assist anyone who wants to know more about them. For more information, visit their website at www.KKAC.org or call their office at (501) 500-3353, and someone from their team will be happy to help.
Mr. Peer: The most challenging part is getting the ones that don't know about us to explore.
Mr. Ryland: The most challenging thing is allowing people to grow, as Mr. Peer said earlier. We don't try to figure out how many will succeed, but we give them all we have in terms of exposure, and the rest will take care of itself. It's like that biblical scripture about raising a child. That child may leave at some point, but they always return to what they learned. We realize once they go, you know, they'll have choices to make, and we pray they'll make the right choice.
How does the organization expand its reach throughout the state and beyond?
Mr. Peer: We have good partners, and our partners are helping us to expand. As a matter of fact, with our youth program, The Nature Conservancy wants to partner with us, and the US Fish and Wildlife wants to partner with us. They want us to find the students and prepare them for their internship program. We’re going to expand because we understand how critically important it is for us to provide for our kids the things that they need that they don't get at home. We will be working with students in Lee, Phillips, Monroe, San Francis, Monroe, and Jefferson County. We will probably start taking students from Pulaski County and others as long as we have enough financial resources to accommodate the students.
We operate in six states, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina. and Kentucky. But we are hoping to expand to Kentucky and Tennessee. We intend to have a similar program to Sowing Seeds in Mississippi. Hopefully, we can start it early in 2024 because our kids are smart.
What does KKAC hope to further accomplish?
Mr. Peer: With our five-year plan, we want to create an endowment because we think the work that we are doing is vitally important to African Americans in this country who still own land. In all of the states we work in, we try to help black people understand how important it is to do proper estate planning. Every time a black person dies in America without a good estate plan, we lose wealth. There's no way around that. We plan to create an endowment so the work that we are doing will continue.
What advice would you share with someone interested in pursuing an agricultural-related career?
Mr. Peer: The first thing I would say is to get along with your relatives, particularly if you own land. The quickest way to lose land is to fight with your relatives. The second thing I would say is if you own anything, make a will or trust. If you don't have your estate plan already ready, then you are going to lose some of your wealth. The third thing I would say is if you are thinking about going into agricultural production, start slow.
What professional and personal legacy do you want to leave?
Mr. Ryland: God made the land we are utilizing, and when we die, the land is still here. We want to make sure that people are good stewards of the land God has given us and leave an inheritance for our children’s children. I've always been a part of the land; now, I’m trying to help reach others through the KKAC organization.
Mr. Peer: One crucial thing to me is helping black landowners enroll their land in agriculture conservation easement programs. That's land that the government will pay a landowner to take their land out of crop production. Enrolling in the conservation easement, you get the money and keep the land. This year will be the first year we enroll in the land that belonged to black people. That's significant because they don't have to sell the land to reach financial benefit. They can keep the land and pass it on to their children. That's one legacy that I think we are on the road to leaving. The other one is we are helping many people do proper estate plans. If they come to our office, we will write the wills and trusts for free. If we can create an endowment when Mr. Ryland and I are gone, the young people will be able to keep KKAC going. I'm going to leave some land for my kids. They may think it isn’t much, but when they get my age, they will realize the sweet spot left for them.
The KKAC Organization is happy to assist anyone who wants to know more about them. For more information, visit their website at www.KKAC.org or call their office at (501) 500-3353, and someone from their team will be happy to help.
