History
In Shoffner, Arkansas, Delta Harvest was founded by Hallie Shoffner, a sixth-generation commodity farmer and daughter of agricultural pioneers John and Wendy Shoffner. Over three decades, John and Wendy performed thousands of research trials, working with soybeans, cotton, corn, rice, wheat, canola, okra, sunflowers, and more.
Seed Stock Production
The Shoffner's grew the operation to include seed stock production for soybeans and, later, Hallie expanded into specialty rice seed, including basmati, jasmine, sushi rice, sake rice, forbidden rice, and more.
Becoming Delta Harvest
In partnership with AgLaunch and the World Wildlife Fund's Delta Ag Alliance (formerly The Next California), Shoffner created a pilot program to market and produce specialty rice benefiting Black and women farmers in Arkansas and Mississippi. The pilot's success led to the adoption of a regional food hub model and Delta Harvest was born.
Building a Food Hub
Delta Harvest leases warehouse space and land on Shoffner's legacy farm to build a regional food hub for specialty crops. In the next three years, Delta Harvest will retrofit space to enable the development of new crop market opportunities.