ELLERBE — Dr. Dale McInnis never went into the agriculture business, but says the lessons he learned on the family farm in Norman helped him during his educational career.
McInnis, recently retired president of Richmond Community College and current head of the O’Neal School, spoke about that connection during the annual Farmers Appreciation Luncheon Monday at Millstone 4-H Camp.
The McInnis family has been farming the land since moving to Richmond County in the late 1700s, with the longtime educator taking a different path from his brothers who continued the tradition.
The first lesson McInnis said he learned was planning.
“A lot of the work I did at the college involved looking beyond today and planning down the road,” McInnis said. “Well, anybody that’s farmed is automatically a planner. You’re building a plan, not just for the month ahead or the season, you’re doing multi-year planning.”
McInnis recalled his father calling produce buyers and mapping out his crops for the year.
“He was very strategic, and I grew up watching that,” McInnis said. “And I tried to learn and apply how to do that.”
McInnis also learned about marketing from the farm.
“Daddy understood vertical and horizontal integration long before I learned it in a text book in a marketing and management class,” he said. “He explained it to me riding down the road. He worked on different ways to market and promote his produce and to diversify what he was doing.”
McInnis said he put that lesson of diversifying to work at the college in order to fulfill the mission and “serve the entire community.”
Other lessons McInnis learned on the farm and incorporated into running the college included team-building, leadership, goal-setting, knowing when something is played out and learning how to move on, and how to follow through on a project.
“He knew it wasn’t done until it was done,” McInnis said about his father. “And I have tried to practice that in my work in education and I’ve tried to teach that sense of follow-through and seeing it all the way across the finish line.
“You can’t celebrate on the 10-yard line — you have to cross the finish line. You don’t celebrate until the season’s over.”
The final two lessons McInnis said he learned were “getting the most juice for the squeeze” and finding the competitive advantage.
For the latter, McInnis said he tried to find unique programs for the college, like the Electrical Substation Relay Technology Program — which is one of just a few across the nation and was the first in the state.
FARM OF THE YEAR
Following McInnis’ speech, Hill Farms outside of Ellerbe was recognized as the 2024 Family Farm of the Year.
“Every year, we recognize a farm for your contributions to agriculture, to our county,” said Anthony Growe, field crop and livestock agent for the N.C. Cooperative Extension’s Richmond County office.
“Farming has always been a way of life for Bill Hill,” Growe said. The land was purchased by Hill’s father in 1968 and the family raised chickens, tobacco, hay and quail.
Hill purchased the farm from his father in 1992 and began raising produce and chickens and has been a provider for Mountaire since 1996, Growe said.
In addition to selling produce in urban markets like Winston-Salem and Raleigh, the Hills operated three stands along U.S. 220 — selling up to 1,000 watermelons and 500 cantaloupes a day — until traffic declined from the bypass.
After that, the Hills concentrated on raising poultry, cattle and hay.
“Bill’s philosophy is ‘Work won’t kill ya,’” Growe said. “And that rings very true and I think that can be applied in all facets of whatever you’re trying to pursue, not just agriculture.”
