The Aristocratic Sweet Potato Leads Mississippi’s Farm Scene

Thanksgiving is a distant memory now, but the multiple aromas of the kitchen will remain alive in our olfactory receptors.

I’m guessing there were few food-service operations anywhere, particularly those resting south of the Mason-Dixon Line (a geographical marker along the borders of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland), that failed to produce an offering derived from the noble, aureate sweet potato.

And in most of those cases, said sweet potatoes emanated from Mississippi, and more specifically from the fertile, unrivaled sweet potato fields of Calhoun County.

I spotted them a day or two before the feast – boxes and boxes of sweet potatoes weighing 40-pounds apiece in a Southwest Georgia market. They were shipped to that region and all over the Southeast from Bailey Farms, a major supplier based at Calhoun City in the north-central part of the state.

Shoppers weren’t grabbing handfuls. They were taking whole boxes from the “Sweet Potato Capital of the World.” By the time Thanksgiving was over, the pile of boxes was almost depleted.

The whys and wherefores of this Mississippi phenomenon are easily explainable: It’s the dirt.

In an article from the “Farm Flavor” website, written in partnership with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce, farmer Andy Landreth forthrightly declared, “It’s the type of soil we have that makes them sweet.”

Former State Rep. Joey Grist of Calhoun City, seeing my Facebook post on this subject, insisted, “Sweet potatoes are only good if they are from my part of the world.”

A 40-mile area around Vardaman is ground zero for Mississippi’s sweet potato kingdom. With many large grocery chains and smaller stores carrying the delectable product, the industry generates upwards of $100 million annually in economic impact to the state.

A requisite system of crop research is based at the Pontotoc Ridge-Flatwoods Branch Experiment Station in Pontotoc, where scientists study management practices and other factors to determine the most efficient way to produce a bountiful harvest.

Some may not know that the crop, according to the Stark-ville-based Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Extension Service, is that sweet potatoes, unlike most vegetables, are not grown from seed. They are cultivated using sprouts, or slips, from bedded roots, according to MAFES scientists.

“We try to let our industry stakeholders’ needs drive our research. They tell us their problems and we address them,” said MAFES researcher Dr. Stephen Meyers.

There’s even a program challenging student teams to create useful, value-added products from the almost 30-percent of the crop not suitable for fresh markets due to size, shape, color or appearance of some sweet potatoes. This led to a wave of items that include deer attractants, personal care products like lip balms and soaps and microbial leather.

It is a strange but wonderful fact that certain corridors of geographical territory are best suited for growing specific foodstuffs that are known far and wide. Prime examples are Vidalia onions and Fort Valley peaches in Georgia; and watermelons in Smith County, Mississippi, and Tangipahoa and Washington Parishes, Louisiana; along with Calhoun County sweet potatoes.

Those crops can be grown in other farm belts, but they’re unlikely to attain the success – or the taste – of the locales having the appropriate soil for their production.

The Armour Co., in a 1922 report, described U.S. agriculture as an industry able “to give employment to millions … to feed all of its own people and still have much food left over to help feed other nations.”

The principal crops of each state were listed. Leading Mississippi’s farm scene were silk-stocking cotton and the aristocratic sweet potato.

Thankfully, some things are eternal.