“I’ve got goals that I wanted to achieve in life, and I couldn’t achieve all those goals working for somebody else,” North Carolina turkey and hog farmer Zack Sholar explained about his path to becoming an entrepreneur. Sholar comes from a family of Duplin County farmers and has been working on and with the land for almost his entire life. Now, he’s several years into farming on his own.
Sholar started learning how to farm young, just as soon as he was able to follow his grandfather around. He then worked for other agricultural operations until two loans from First Citizens Bank and the NC Rural Center made it possible for him to build six all-in, all-out turkey houses and run a three-house hog operation in Chinquapin and Beulaville. In time, he’d like to build six more turkey houses.
The first loan let him build the turkey houses on land deeded to him by his grandfather and the second loan allowed him to purchase a hog farm from his uncle, which he then refurbished. Sholar plans to add additional turkey houses and to grow his operation enough that he’ll eventually be able to slow down and take a step back. He also hopes his young son, who currently enjoys toddling around the farm and eyeing the large-scale equipment and requisite trucks, will have more to start with than he did.
How Integrated Production Helps North Carolina Farmers
Sholar works in integrated production, where companies, in his case, Butterball for the turkeys and Smithfield for the hogs, contract farmers to grow their livestock. Sholar provides the facilities, labor, and land, while the integrators provide the animals, feed, veterinary care, and more. His cousin, Caden Lanier, helps him run the farm.
While driving east toward Duplin County from Raleigh includes many scenic views featuring vast fields of row crops, Sholar shares how it’s actually integrated production that’s critical for his part of the state.
“If you take the hogs, chickens, and turkeys away [from Duplin County], there would be nothing here. There would be no jobs. It would be absolutely just poorer than anything,” he said.
He adds that many people in the local row crop business own livestock to fall back on, a practice that allows them to continue growing crops.
Sholar receives the turkeys a day-and-a-half after they hatch. Those turkeys are with him, at roughly 9,500-9,600 turkeys to a house, for roughly 20-21 weeks. That means that, with assistance from Butterball, just shy of 60,000 turkeys are in his care until they grow to 52 pounds. The hogs arrive at Sholar’s later in their lifecycle for about the same amount of time and grow to 300 pounds. The integrators handle livestock delivery to the property and removal from it.
Funding the Future with Capital
To acquire the capital needed to fund this venture, Sholar worked with David Sutton, an ag business banker at First Citizens Bank. While First Citizens provided the bulk of the loan, additional money from the Rural Center allowed Sholar to take out a slightly larger loan to grow his operation. Sutton has known the family for decades and was aware of their rich background in farming, especially with row crops and hogs. He believed the addition of poultry in the family mix would be a good decision.
Sholar’s loan for the turkey buildings was the first loan Sutton worked with the Rural Center on, saying that “the Rural Center has been, in my 25 years of ag lending, an excellent fit for ag loans.” He continues, “I can’t tell you the ease of doing business [with the Center], it’s just a pleasure to work with them.”
These loans gave Sholar the opportunity to move from working for someone else to working for himself. “Once I got some land, then you got a little bit of something that you can build on.” And now he’s been able to build something, with plans for more to come.
