Two farming families in the Deep South representing six generations of experience across a wide swath of produce categories have joined forces to operate as Generation Farms, headquartered in Lake Park, GA.

Stanley Farms in Vidalia, GA, has long been known as a top producer of Vidalia onions, watermelon, cucumber, squash and row crops. Coggins Farms in Lake Park enjoys a similar reputation as a grower of carrots, sweet potatoes, edamame, peppers, leafy vegetables and blueberries.

Effective immediately, the two farms will work together, sharing infrastructure as a single entity known as Generation Farms, Vince Stanley told The Produce News March 4. Employees were notified March 1.

“What we appreciate so much is how we’re integrating with another third-generation farm that mirrors so much of what the Stanley family has been over the decades,” Stanley said. “We share something incredible, our stories are nearly alike. They’ve had and solved all the same problems and challenges we have, they’ve all had to put on five or six hats at once and all those things farmers have had to do.”

The operations will retain almost all current staff and also have access to additional resources due to the new ownership structure.

“We’re so diversified as a team now because we did not overlap much at all in our specialty items,” Stanley said. “We’re coming in with a great level of expertise without overlapping. Not only that, now our footprint covers a couple hundred miles in the Southeast. Coggins is able to come onto the marketplace earlier than us with their produce, then we’re able to follow suit. What we’re doing is extending our window and our ability to be a longer-term source for this customer base.”

Generation Farms (www.generationfarms.com) will grow for retail, foodservice and food processors. The company will have an edge in the latter area because “we both have a processing division already,” Stanley said. “At Stanley Farms, we specialize in processing onions as well as bottled products with gourmet recipes that feature Vidalia onions as the key ingredient. On Coggins’ side is their ability to do a variety of processed carrot sizes and packs.”

Stanley is excited about the new resources Generation Farms’ ownership brings to the table. Both operations are long-rumored to have been purchased by an entity tied to Bill Gates, a claim Stanley would not discuss.

“The biggest thing we we want to focus on at Generation Farms is what we can do moving forward,” he said. “The thing about our new management is they want us to have total input, so we are still very much operating as a family farm. Let’s not lose sight of that. If you go and look, right now you’ve got 90 percent retention of each farm’s labor force and access to resources that small family farmers just don’t have as a rule.”

Stanley said those resources will quickly position Generation Farms as one of the East Coast’s largest 12-month grower-packers of sweet onions and other vegetables. The organic program will continue to grow, making Generation Farms “one of the largest organic growers on the East Coast,” according to Stanley.

“As much as we were firmly entrenched in the marketplace, I just knew we could not get to the point of getting the level of professional organization and group together that we now have,” Stanley said. “That’s what this collaboration has done for us. They’ve brought in a professional accounting group, legal group, professional food safety and human resources people. We even have a new agronomy team that guides our farmers, and there’s a research and development component as well planting test plots, looking at new crops and moving us to the future.”

Stanley expects the current product line will grow quickly.

“We are evolving to become the year-round source for the items we now grow and because of our diversity we want to continue to grow into more products. Why? Because we have the ability and the expertise and the resources to do so,” Stanley said. “I’ve been in this for 25 years now and I’ve never seen a network or group that still call themselves farmers with this much expertise across the entire spectrum of business. We have three generations that have a combined 100 years each of experience, we have individual strengths and we’re now able to stay in front of customers longer.”

Stanley is excited about having the freedom to simply focus on farming.

“You know there are limitations on every small farm, but let me tell you, we don’t have those limitations now,” he said. “We’ve got a slogan that we’re moving towards and that is ‘Growing the RIGHT way’ – and RIGHT equals respect, integrity, growth, health and happiness, and teamwork. We like that.”