Booker T. and the Pizza King
(Page 2 of 5)
July/August 1988
By the Mother Earth News editors
"I said I was pleased but very surprised to hear from him," Whatley writes in Booker T. Whatley's Handbook on How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres (Regenerative Agriculture Association, 222 Main St., Emmaus, PA 18098; $17.95 paperback, $24.95 hardback).
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"I don't know why Booker would be surprised," Monaghan says. "All of us eat three meals a day, and I haven't heard that eating is going out of style."
The two men met a few months later, and Tom was charmed. In his autobiography, Pizza Tiger (Random House, 1986, $17.95), an intimate and inspiring account of the determination it can take to survive the ups and downs of becoming a business success, Monaghan recalls his first impression of Whatley: "I was completely captivated by this [then] 68-year-old black man. He came on like Bill Cosby imitating Uncle Remus; he had the audience in stitches, but he never cracked a smile, while making sly jokes based on farm folklore and taking pokes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He has a low opinion of farm bureaucracy."
That opinion obviously appealed to Monaghan, who struggles to keep his own operation as simple as possible and fights moves to increase unnecessary paperwork. It's also obvious, when one sees the two men together, that they think very highly of each other. On June 23,1987, the pair dedicated the 100-acre Booker T. Whatley Farm, based on Whatley's idea of producing a diverse mix of high-value crops for pick-your-own cust omers (in this case, many of whom will be Domino's Pizza employees). By paying a yearly membership fee, clients will be able to buy such organically grown farm products as honey, lamb, Christmas trees, venison, pheasant, quail, catch-your-own fish and pick-your-own fruits, berries and vegetables. Within five years, Booker T. and Tom expect the farm to gross $2.5 million. They also hope that, by the year 2000, the Whatley plan will have saved 100,000 of our country's small farms.
The Whatley Way
A mix of high-value crops is the backbone of Whatley's plan to preserve farmland by making farming profitable.
"The trouble with today's average small farm is that it's nothing but a scaled-down big farm," he growls in a husky baritone. "The guy with 25 or 40 acres is doing the same thing as the big boys: planting corn, cotton and soybeans. He can't afford to! Costs are too high. Returns are way too low."
Whatley recommends that a 25-acre farm have at least 10 components, each with an earning potential of $3,000 a year and each thus representing no more than 10% of the farm's projected gross income. Then if bad weather, disease or some other misfortune wipes out one component, the farm can still operate at 90% efficiency.
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