Brannen Family Farms
Statesboro, Georgia
The Brannen Family
Brannen Family Farms is a multi-generational family farm in Bulloch County, Georgia. Today, three brothers, Ryne, Jamie, and Sean, work with their father, Jackie, to preserve the farm. The farm has experienced changes throughout its lifetime to remain sustainable despite the challenges each generation has faced.
Ryne, Jamie, and Sean’s great-grandfather, Rufus, grew row and vegetable crops during the Great Depression and World War II. He hauled produce to Savannah daily to sell it and support his family.
Rufus’s son, Jack A. Brannen, Sr., took over the farm in the late 1940s. A severe drought in 1953 led to the well running dry for the Brannens and those around them. With an innovative mindset, Jack Brannen Sr. fabricated a well driller that could drill a deeper well. Once he successfully did it on their family farm, he drilled new wells for his neighbors. Jack Brannen, Sr.’s well drilling business allowed him to generate an alternate source of income during a difficult time for agriculture. His success in the well drilling business allowed him to purchase back pieces of the farm that had been split off between siblings of the previous generation.
During the ’70s, Jack Brannen, Jr. (Jackie) and his brother Wayne attended the University of Georgia; Jackie studied agronomy, and Wayne studied animal science. The two returned to the farm and ran it as the next generation alongside Jack Brannen, Sr. The brothers used their degrees to start a hog operation and continued growing corn, soybeans, and peanuts. Once again, the farm experienced an extreme drought in the 1980s, meaning the family needed to pivot to keep the farm afloat. Jackie worked two jobs to support his family during this time. He worked for a paving company during the evenings and returned to the farm to work during the day.
In the late 80s, Jackie learned to spray crops with an airplane, commonly known as crop dusting, and ran an aerial spraying business alongside the farm for over 20 years. During this time, Jackie and Wayne also partnered with a neighboring to share equipment to reduce farm operating costs and keep the farm operating sustainably. Wayne also started a poultry operation raising broilers for Claxton Poultry and has since split off from the row crop operation to focus on poultry production and a cow/calf herd.
The generations currently operating the farm consists of Jackie and his three sons, Ryne, Jamie, and Sean. Ryne graduated from the University of Georgia, and Jamie and Sean went to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. Ryne and Jamie joined the operation in 2012, and Sean came in after graduating college a few years later. Another severe drought in 2011, the year before Ryne and Jamie came home to the farm, had set the farm back financially. In addition to the stress of that one season, the weight of bad years dating all the way back to 1980 had the operation in a precarious situation. Also, adding Ryne and Jamie, and their families, meant more acres were needed to support everyone. Two neighboring farmers retired after 2011, which enabled the Brannens to rent additional acres in 2012.
The 2012 growing season presented the farm with one more chance to ensure the family farm's future for the next generation. Through the Lord’s provision, the farm harvested some of the highest-yielding cotton and peanuts in many years. The farm paid off all the debt from 2011 and previous seasons, allowing this newest generation to continue the legacy.
Brannen Family Farms continues to operate under the management of Jackie, Ryne, Jamie, and Sean. They work each day in the hope to glorify God and pass the farm to their children. Using precision application technology, conservation tillage, erosion control measures and many other conservation techniques, they hope to not only preserve the land, but to improve it for the next generation.
If the mission of Brannen Family Farms can be summed up shortly, it is best done in this passage of Paul’s writing to the Corinthians: I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.