During this harvest season, as during spring planting, independent farm machinery mechanic D.J. Brannen can spend as many days and hours as he likes fixing big, mostly green, machines. But he took time to attend the Bulloch County Farm City Week Breakfast, where he was surprised to be named 2024 Ag Partner of the Year.
It was an award for an agricultural businessman who went independent a few years ago, presented by a group calling itself the Bulloch County Ag Council that has gone independent this year to continue the awards. The "Ag Partner" designation had traditionally rotated, every second year, with a "Farmer of the Year" award presented by the Statesboro-Bulloch Chamber of Commerce.
Farmer David Cromley of Kairos Farms, speaking as a member of the Bulloch County Ag Council, explained the change Tuesday to the 8 a.m. breakfast crowd in the Oak Room at Ogeechee Technical College.
"What this is and how it came to be is that we discovered back in the spring that the chamber was not going to host this Farm City Week event," Cromley said, "and it's nothing against them, they just had too much going on in the fall, and a group of us – the Farm Bureau and Ag South and just individuals – decided this is important to us, this is something we want to continue doing."
So he had called Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jennifer Davis to ask if these sponsors could host the event, "and she said, 'We would love for you to,'" Cromley reported.
Bulloch County Farm Bureau, of which Cromley is current president, and Kairos Farms were two of the 10 "platinum" sponsors for the Farm City Breakfast. AgSouth Farm Credit; BBWH Insurors; Birdsong Peanuts; Bulloch First; Dabbs, Hickman, Hill & Cannon CPAs; GreenPoint AG; Renasant Bank; and Southland Crop Insurance were other platinum sponsors.
Gifts to FFA & 4-H
The printed program also recognized nine "gold" sponsors and 12 "silver" sponsors. Together, Farm City Week sponsors and donors not only funded the breakfast, but also provided substantial gifts to four agriculture-related clubs for school-age youth and an "ag literacy" program for younger students.
Portal Middle High School FFA, Southeast Bulloch High School FFA, Statesboro High School FFA and Bulloch County 4-H each received $1,500 checks. The "ag literacy" program, to place agriculture-related books in the hands of elementary school children, is funded in cooperation with the Georgia Foundation for Agriculture and Georgia Farm Bureau.
In addition to the award plaque for Brannen, the new Ag Council also had plaques created naming past Ag Partners and Farmers of the Year for display in the Bulloch County UGA Extension office.
Brannen's 'B4 Farms'
Having previously worked for Caterpillar dealer Yancey Bros., D.J. Brannen started with area John Deere dealership Blanchard Equipment at its Statesboro location on Jan. 2, 2013, and remained with that company for eight years. Effective Dec. 31, 2020, he left Blanchard and launched himself in the farm machinery service business as B4 Farms Equipment Repair.
"B4," he explains, represents four Brannens, himself and his wife Brooke and their son Dustin, 15, and daughter Maddison, 9.
Brooke came to the Farm City Breakfast, as did the Ag Partner of the Year's mother, Dale Brannen, all three of his sisters and some brothers-in-law. D.J. Brannen, now 37, grew up on a Screven County family farm, working through his teenage years with his father, the late James Roberston "Pete" Brannen III, who also operated a trucking business. His son the mechanic still keeps some cattle, and young Dustin and Madison show cows with FFA and 4-H.
A Screven County High School graduate, D.J. Brannen learned to repair tractors, cotton pickers and other machinery on the farm, on the job and through basic and machine-specific classes while working for the dealerships.
In an interview, he acknowledged that his going into business for himself grew out of the "right to repair" struggle between farmers and equipment manufacturers. The John Deere company in particular made some concessions in recent years, including in a January 2023 agreement with the American Farm Bureau Federation.
"Through the years, customers just kind of felt like they had their backs against the wall from corporations getting bigger and bigger," Brannen said. "They didn't feel a very good treatment from a big corporation … and I wanted to be able to give them an outlet to go to somebody that they knew directly and that they could work with somebody that appreciated them."
That farmers appreciate him in return was indicated by a video Cromley showed before the Brannen was announced as the honoree. In the video, local farmers James Nevil, Josh Brannen, Toby Conner and Colt Nevil each took a turn saying why they supported "the nominee" or "this great ag partner" without actually naming him.
"The nominee is a very hard working man who's taken chances outside of the comfort zone to build a career and a name for himself," Conner said in the video. "He's always here for us, he always answers the phone, he never lets us down, he understands the seasons and the times, and he understands what we're going through."
D.J. Brannen has 25 to 30 farmers who are established customers, and answers service calls to farms in Bulloch, Screven, Jenkins, Candler and Evans counties and occasionally in Effingham or as far as Burke or Tattnall counties, he said in an interview after breakfast. How busy does he stay?
"As busy as I want to stay," he said. "Most of the time it's busier than I can handle."
Planting and harvest times are when his services are in highest demand to keep the tractors, pickers and combines rolling. But off-season maintenance and problems that turn up during cultivation mean "I've always got backlogged work for when it's not 'go time,'" Brannen said.
Before the Ag Partner award presentation, Farm City Week Breakfast attendees heard from guest speaker Will Bentley, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council.
