Sustainable Farming for Global and National Food Security

Chad and Jodi Ray are being recognized as Champions of Change for their work demonstrating that corporate environmental leadership makes sense, both for business and for American communities.

You want children and their parents to value the family farm lifestyle and farmers? We must educate, educate, and educate some more why sustainable farming is so important to our world food supply.

Ray Family Farms of Bunn, NC markets their products directly to the consumer. We produce Animal Welfare Approved beef, pork and eggs. We also grow vegetables and raise poultry. The only family farmer poultry processor in our state is not AWA approved -- that is the only reason our poultry is not. We raise delicious, healthy, and nutritious food from “conception to consumption.”  Other than animal welfare, our farm is very committed to educating our customers and community, promoting environmental stewardship, and utilizing wildlife enhanced farmland. 

The history of our family’s roots here in Franklin County, NC are as deep as a 200’ pine tree. The history of our farm however is not. It is less than 35 years old. Our parents' generation was really the first to ever accumulate land assets. We come from a long line of “dirt” farmers -- dirt farmers were all the people around here who lived off the land. All of their income and the food they ate came from the patch of land they were working. Most of the time that involved working other peoples' land -- sharecropping.  My mother and her family moved 14 times in 16 years while she grew up as a sharecropper. Our parents will leave us our farm that was purchased in our lifetime. That is a very powerful responsibility knowing our ancestors worked hundreds of years to give us the opportunity to make something great out of a farm handed down to us.

Fruitful Under the Sun

Doctors, teachers, lawyers, priests, like many other professionals, set about on course of academic preparation for their lifetime careers. For me as a wife and mother, I worked to help put my husband through college, with second consideration for my academic course of study in accounting. It was through my fortuitous meeting with the then President of the Board of Directors of Tierra del Sol Housing Corporation who encouraged me to come to work at Tierra del Sol that I started on my profession as Executive Director of a then local nonprofit organization, which provided housing opportunities on an otherwise disenfranchised and yet critically important sector to our local agricultural community, the farmworkers and the working poor.

There was no real academic course of study to prepare me for the many challenges and problems that I would encounter during the past 31 years. It was in the trenches that I learned the lessons of community work and with it gained the tenacity and passion for my work.  Decades later, in reflecting my experiences, I chuckle when I think about coming from an office setting to trudging through the desert sands of construction sites in my Italian shoes. I was a female working in a male dominated construction field and I too had the additional challenge of proving myself in that environment. It’s been a good race and it is an honor to be recognized as a “Champion of Change” by the White House. I am truly honored and humbled by this award.  It has been my privilege to have found my passion and to serve the people of New Mexico. I have also been blessed to have the support of so many dedicated leaders from our local communities who recognize the economic and social needs of people in rural areas of our states along the international border corridor between the United States and Mexico. My success is beholding to the people who have come to belief that collectively, we can effect change and can bring significant improvements to the lives of our clients.