When the retiring generation passes down an entrepreneurial spirit, the next generation grabs onto viable opportunities with a confidence born from teaching and experience.
That’s what’s happening at Trantham Farms in Alexandria in central Alabama.
“We’re blessed to have family that could see the future before it was here,” Daniel Trantham says. “They taught us and let us grow into it.”
3 generations of growth
Daniel and wife Carla — winners of American Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers & Ranchers Achievement Award in 2023 — are the third generation on the operation.
The first generation started the farm in the early 1970s and added a trucking business in the ’80s.
The second generation expanded the farm and the trucking business, added irrigation, opened a retail feed store, and started marketing deer corn to retail stores and individual customers.
As the third generation, Daniel and Carla began offering custom feed mixes, as well as manufacturing feed trailers, after a company in Birmingham, Ala., sold out and the new owners moved the operation to Iowa.
“It didn’t make sense to me that the closest supplier was so far away when chickens are grown in the Southeast,” Daniel says. His thought? “There’s a void, and we can fill that void.”
Supporting that idea was the synergy with their trucking company, Trantham Services.
Their trucks deliver chicken feed, and they once bought their trailers from the Birmingham plant. For the first few years of their new manufacturing business, they figured on being their own best customer.
“But we’re in the feed mills. People are going to see us, and our trailer business is going to grow,” says Daniel as he recalls that time.
And grow it has — as has the feed business, the volume of wheat straw sales and the number of acres they farm. So, what’s next?
Diversify for next in line
The Tranthams don’t know what their children will want to do.
“We want our children to be able to farm,” Carla says. With five children, she says the question is: “How are they going to have a place here?”
So, they’re expanding the opportunities in their operation. A bed-and-breakfast is on tap, along with a wedding venue. They already participate in ag-in-the-classroom events and eventually plan to develop on-farm teaching opportunities.
The Tranthams know they are able to farm because the first two generations created revenue streams that made room for more family members. They’re doing the same.
“If we have a place for our children to be, we have a better chance of them staying,” Daniel says.
Seeing family as their highest-value asset is what pulls the operation through tough calls and tougher conversations. And it’s the focus for every generation on the farm.
“This is a business, and we run it like a business,” Carla says. “But we first and foremost are a family. Someday this could all be gone, but we’re still a family.”