Proud to be a Farmer: Kight family

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Ga. (WTOC) - Modern agriculture has farmers juggling weather, prices and real estate too.

You’ll need a full tank of gas to keep up with Johnny Kight. He and his son farm more than a thousand acres across Montgomery, Toombs, and Treutlen counties. He helped his dad on the farm growing up but took a job in town for a few years only to return.

“I finally decided I might as well try it because it was what I wanted to do and what I enjoyed,” said Kight.

They grow peanuts and cotton, and occasionally corn. But look in the fields and you’ll see a wheat and rye “cover” crop grown in the off season just to conserve soil and water. He says their input costs have been as ever-changing as the weather.

“No two years are the same. We all have to adapt.”

That includes the very land they tend.

While they farm close to 1,600 acres, Kight says they rent roughly 90 percent of them, something that’s more and more common in agriculture.

He says reward of being your own boss outweighs the long hours and uncertain market, as well as handing down a work ethic.

“You can look across the field and he’s working and you’re working together and there’s a pride in that.”

That ongoing legacy helps make him Proud to Be a Farmer.

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