This view, this one right here, is why Travis Satterfield is a farmer. Stepping just outside his backdoor, Satterfield can see how this year’s rice crop is doing. He and his family have had to work to get here and it hasn’t always been easy.

“I left a pretty good job, a lot of security, you know, and with a family and all it was a concern, and when I came back we had three years of fairly tough weather conditions, dryness, and it was just tough, but Nancy and I talked about it and she was really a big part of the decision, she said we’re going to stay here.  Matter of fact, I had a good job offer to go back to work in the private sector, but she said no, we’re going to stay here.  And then things developed.”

Satterfield took over from his father in 1969 and planted his first rice crop in 1974. Today, the combines are turning and the haulers are filled to the brim.

“That was sort of the turning point.  Our land was more suited for that because no water was available and so that was really the turnaround, and that’s the changing, and then a couple of years after that we dropped cotton and went strictly rice and soybean.”

Then came an invite to a Bolivar County Farm Bureau meeting where he got his first look at why Farm Bureau is so important not just to farmers but the whole state.

“We realize that really Farm Bureau is a key to particularly a lot of things that effect on a statewide, or in Jackson, the state legislature, Farm Bureau will play such a key.  And I guess they always have, but just seems they’re more in tune with that now.”

Satterfield has served as the Bolivar County president and on the Mississippi Farm Bureau State Board of Directors. And even on the organization’s centennial, he says the Federation is as strong as it’s ever been.

“I think they’re as strong in Mississippi as they ever have been, and I think it’s very important that we just, we’re able to do that for 100, you do anything for 100 years it’s important, and particularly successful at doing that.  I think it’d be a big tribute to the people who started Farm Bureau and been involved in it, I think a big tribute to them.”

Satterfield says he’s honor to have played a role in the first 100 years of Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, a legacy he sees carried on at Satterfield Farms as the next generation continues to build toward the future.

“It makes you feel proud that you did lay a sort of a foundation, but I’m not saying a built a building, but having a foundation and giving them an opportunity and opportunities are, they’re tough in farming sometimes, because unless you have some way of entry, it’s tough.  And so that gives them some way of entry, and that makes sure that you provide an opportunity for a family member to be successful and do something that they really love.”