2023 Cotton Achievement Award Recipient Bart Davis: Born Farmer, Natural Leader, Perpetual Thinker
January 8, 2024 
2023 Cotton Grower Cotton Achievement Award recipient Bart Davis. (Photo: Jim Steadman)
Bart Davis is part and parcel of the South Georgia land he and his family owns and farms. It’s where he grew up. It’s what he has carefully nurtured and built over the past 43 years — growing from 800 acres in the early 1980s to nearly 7,500 diversified crop acres and about 300 head of cattle today. He is a testament to perseverance and hard work, to overcoming personal tragedy and obstacles, to stepping into leadership roles to help improve his community and the cotton and peanut industries, to accepting and adapting new farming practices, and to always asking, “What can we do to make it better?”
Yet, he still admits, “All I wanted to do was farm.”
In recognition of his farming success, leadership and industry involvement, and continued vision and drive for agriculture’s future, Cotton Grower magazine is honored to recognize Bart Davis, Jr. of Doerun, GA, as the recipient of the 2023 Cotton Grower℠ Cotton Achievement Award.
Building the Family Farm
Davis recalls following his father around the farm, pretty much from the time he could walk.
“I love the farm, and I love being outside,” he says. “As I got older and a little bigger, I could start working more and helping out. I always wanted to farm with my dad.”
The farm work came naturally. And his dad helped prepare Davis for the business side of farming by letting him have a field of cotton or corn every year to manage on his own.
“I had to keep the records on what we spent on those fields,” he recalls, “and then see if I actually made anything off of it when we sold the crop. I came to understand all of that.”
It was a valuable lesson. In 1981, his father was diagnosed with cancer. Later that year, his mother unexpectedly passed away, followed four months later by his father – two months after Davis’s 18th birthday in February 1982. He was a senior in high school. And the family farm was now his responsibility.
“I didn’t get to go to college,” he says. “I learned through real life. You figure out quickly that you don’t know what you don’t know. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. You can learn a lot from your mistakes.”
But he didn’t slow down or back down. He married his high school sweetheart Paula in 1984, and she kept all of the books for the farming business. They grew cotton, peanuts, corn, and wheat, along with their livestock – slowly expanding the farm and settling into their successful cotton/peanut rotation in the 1990s.
Today, Davis Family Farms is a family partnership that includes their sons Trey and Jedd and their daughter Lakyn. Trey primarily focuses on finances and marketing, Jedd manages field production and logistics, and Lakyn – a registered nurse – fills in on her days off. Jedd’s wife Natalie also gets involved, and their children Emma, Brady, and Eliza are getting a head start as the farm’s next generation.
“I’m looking forward to watching them grow and gain a passion for production agriculture,” says their proud grandfather.
All told, the farm has 12 employees – six of whom have ties to the family, including Lakyn’s husband Taylor Buckner. In true family style, everyone pitches in when and where needed.
Getting Involved
That’s been a necessity and a blessing, considering Davis’s off-farm commitments to industry and community service.
“People kept on me about getting involved, so I got on the Georgia Cotton Commission about 11 or 12 years ago,” recalls Davis. “Then came Southern Cotton Growers and Cotton Incorporated for a few years. When I got involved, I learned that I wanted to know more about a lot of things.”
That led to the state’s Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation Board and involvement with the National Cotton Council as a state delegate. He currently serves as chairman of both the Georgia Cotton Commission and the Georgia Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation, as well as a board member of Southern Cotton Growers.
To hear him tell it, he didn’t have much of a chance to say no.
“Mr. Herbert Price, who was chairman of the Boll Weevil Eradication board, came to see me and said they didn’t just want me to be on the board, they wanted me to be the chairman. They already had it figured out.”
Davis’s involvement and work ethic on behalf of the associations has not gone unnoticed.
“I tell people regularly that across all the farmers of all the commodities in every corner of the country that I have met over my time in the industry, I know of no other producer who expects so much of every single thing around them and puts forth so much effort to willingly push that thing to be the best it can be,” says Taylor Sills, Executive Director of the Georgia Cotton Commission. “This includes his crops, his livestock, his community, his neighbors and fellow farmers, and most importantly, the organizations that he involves himself with.”
“It’s hard to imagine how one individual can give so freely of his time to others and farm over 6,000 acres of land,” adds Joe Martin, President of Southern Cotton Growers.
“It’s hard to find new people to be on these boards,” explains Davis. “I spend a lot of time talking to someone just about every day about the boll weevil program or something for the Council. I enjoy it, but it does take time out of my farm work. But we have a good family and a good operation. I’ve been really blessed to have that, and I love it.”
Always Learning, Always Doing
Davis is a perpetual thinker, always wondering what he can do on his farm to improve efficiencies, help protect the environment in his fields, and make every acre more productive. So far, that’s involved adoption of precision ag tools like yield monitors, new variations on soil sampling zones and field mapping, variable rate applications, and soil sensors to help increase irrigation efficiency. He’s working with Quails Forever to help develop habitats for quail in unproductive corners of some of the farm fields. He’s also working with the University of Georgia on a three-year study on variable rate planting techniques. He’s involved in nematode studies. And, he’s exploring options for using drones for mapping, scouting, and for applications of plant growth regulators and defoliants in hard-to-reach areas.
“I always feel like if I’m not changing, I’m not getting anywhere,” states Davis.
He has opened the farm to cotton variety field trials and continues to work with the state’s Extension specialists for on-farm tours with visitors from the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help them better understand the farming community.
Davis is part owner of Doerun Peanut Company, a peanut buying point handling 25,000 to 30,000 tons of peanuts a year and was also part of a group of local business people who established a new community bank – Moultrie Bank and Trust – to serve the Doerun and Moultrie area.
His actions and involvements have not gone unnoticed. He was named Quail Forever Precision Ag Farmer of the Year in 2021, Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce Agribusiness Man of the Year for 2022, and 2023 Georgia Farmer of the Year.
“I love being involved and doing what I can to try to help,” says Davis. “It’s a way of life out here. I just love farming, and I love agriculture.”
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