Brown Family Farm
Top image: Oakley Grove Plantation main house. c 1700’s. Littleton, NC.
Oakley Grove Plantation was built during the 1700s by former slaves and White descendants of Dr. Lafayette Browne and Mary Ann Falcon Browne. At one point, Oakley Grove had 175 enslaved people who were forced to work the plantation’s 7,000 acres. One of those enslaved was Byron C. Brown, who ran away from the plantation at the end of the civil war at age 14. Patrick, the Great Grandson of Bryon C. Brown, purchased Oakley Grove in May of 2021 and now owns the plantation that his great-grandfather once helped build and manage.’
Bottom image: Industrial hemp farmer and Fourth-generation North Carolina farmer Patrick Brown not only bought the farm, he purchased the plantation his great-grandparents toiled upon as enslaved people and were enslaved up until 1865.
“The plantation that my ancestors originated on, that they actually helped build ... I own that plantation now,” Brown, who grows industrial hemp and specialty crops, said during a recent phone conversation as he traveled to Washington, D.C. “We're setting up an agritourism division on that portion of our land so that we can educate young future farmers of America, teach course curriculum and have seminars and a bed-and- breakfast.”
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His Ancestors Were Enslaved People, But Now This Hemp Farmer Owns the Plantation
By Dan Sullivan/Lancaster Farming dot com
Oct 16, 2022 Updated Oct 17, 2023
Established in 1865 at the end of the Civil War, Brown Family Farm has 165 acres of family land and 150 acres of leased land under production, and sits in the Hecks Grove community in Warren County, North Carolina, where Patrick’s great-grandfather, Byron Brown, grew timber and raised livestock until his death in 1931.
One of 12 siblings, Patrick’s grandfather, Grover Brown, took over the farm and planted a peach grove, grew grains and raised livestock through the 1970s.
Patrick’s father, Arthur, started farming the land in 1968 and grew tobacco, grains and vegetables, and raised livestock, until he retired in 2003.
Like many farm kids, Patrick always had a hand in running the farm. He attended Fayetteville State University, earned a business degree in 2005, and, around 2014, began investigating the soon-to-be legalized hemp space.
Brown Family Farms & Produce now grows industrial hemp for fiber and plant extracts, and specialty herbs and vegetables, grown organically and sold through a CSA as well as a distribution center.
“My great-grandfather, Byron Brown, was enslaved to Oakley Grove Plantation in Littleton,” Patrick said. “At the end of the Civil War, he became a sharecropper.”
“He was willed a certain amount of land, and then he was able to buy more land,” Patrick said, adding that the original plantation totaled 7,000 acres.
Patrick’s father, now 95, was born in 1927 and became a minister while also farming the family land until 2010, when his son took the reins.
Patrick worked in the federal government for 13 years, including as an agricultural adviser in Afghanistan, before returning to the farm full-time. Except for his time abroad, Patrick has always maintained an active hand in the family operation.
“After my dad retired in 2003, I pretty much worked along with the farmer that we were leasing some land out with,” Patrick said. “We worked together for a while, and then he retired in 2017. I just started focusing on specialty crop programs and regenerative (agriculture) and started growing industrial hemp.”
New Direction
Brown Family Farm ceased growing tobacco in 2017. Up until then it was its main cash crop, along with soybeans, wheat and corn, which were were also retired.
“I wanted to find a way that I could regenerate the land,” Patrick said, including not leasing it out to farmers who would likely spray herbicides and pesticides.
Business diversification is as important to a farmer’s bottom line as biological diversity is to the health of a farm ecosystem, Patrick suggested, and he advises other farmers not to put all their eggs in one basket.
While he grows hemp strains to make CBD oil and other high-end, value-added products such as salves under his own “Hemfinity” label [LINK to https://hempfinityus.com/], Brown also grows and bales industrial hemp for fiber that nets him between $500 and $600 an acre.
“The more acres we plant, the more profitable it is,” he said.
“This is a crop that potentially can have the opportunity of intertwining with cotton production, it can regenerate the land where other crops cannot, and of course it allows farmers to not have to utilize synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. That's more important to me than focusing just on profit.”
Chickens and Eggs
Brown concedes that U.S. manufacturing has not made the necessary infrastructure investments in industrial hemp.
“The corporations are not willing to invest in the manufacturing facilities for decorticating (separating the bast fibers and hurd fibers) right now, because they have to be able to determine that the supply is going to be there,” he said.
Companies like Patagonia and VF Corp. (parent company of brands including Vans, The North Face, Timberland and Dickies) are beginning to look toward domestic producers like Brown, he said, as overseas supply chains become less and less dependable in an uncertain world climate.
And speaking of climate, the outdoor apparel giant Patagonia — one of Brown’s partners along with VF Corp — announced in September it would irrevocably transfer ownership of the $3 billion company to a group of trusts and nonprofits battling climate change.
“I’ve been filming with Patagonia for a documentary coming out in November,” Brown said. “We really can’t talk too much in reference to it until after that. They are helping with BIPOC farmers — which are Black indigenous people of color — to work with to help them to develop farmer production to focus solely on carbon sequestration.”
The company is also on board with his plans to turn the former plantation into a resource for beginning and BIPOC farmers, Patrick said.
“We have a donation page, and they're going to be advertising for us to help renovate the plantation.”