Find What You’re Called to Do

As an undergraduate entering NC State in the mid-1970s, 2024 CALS Distinguished Alumni Award winner Dallas Barnes wasn’t sure what his purpose was. Coming from a long line of peanut and ag industry business leaders, Barnes started taking courses in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“I didn’t really have a clue what I wanted to do,” Barnes says. “While at NC State, I came to faith and it made a huge difference in my life.”

Barnes joined Cru, a campus Christian ministry, which helped him solidify his faith and purpose in life. He earned his bachelor’s degree in agronomy and soaked up lessons in his business and philosophy classes as well as through his ministry work. Upon graduation in 1978, he was at a crossroads.

“I took some time to really think about what I was called to do, and though I didn’t fully understand it at the time, I know now I was called to be in this business,” Barnes says. 

Food and Ag Business

Barnes began working with his father at Severn Peanut Company in September 1978. He learned the business from the ground up, starting in the peanut seed department with fellow NC State alumnus Elbert Long. He moved into farmer stock peanut procurement and into peanut sales in the 1980s, learning both the agricultural supply sales part of the business and food production, which at the time consisted mostly of ballpark peanuts. 

In 1992, Barnes became CEO of Meherrin Agricultural and Chemical Company. Under Barnes’ leadership, the company expanded from being a distributor in North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina to helping farmers produce millions of acres of peanuts, corn, soybeans and wheat. Meherrin expanded and vertically integrated its ag and food businesses, and it now includes nine subsidiaries: Severn Peanut Co., Hampton Farms, Jimbo’s Jumbos, Ready Roast Foods, Cache Creek Foods, Meherrin Fertilizer, Halifax Fertilizer, Tri-County Fertilizer and Barber Farm Supply. 

“Our retail goes from Delaware all the way down to the Florida line along the Atlantic seaboard,” Barnes says. “We also expanded on the food side of things, evolving from being a peanut in-shell company to processing peanuts and tree nuts.”

Fifty years into his career, Barnes has ensured the business remains a family affair. Five of Barnes’ nine children work at Meherrin, learning various aspects of the business along with some of their cousins. 

Ministry and Giving Back

Barnes’ call to faith at NC State has stayed with him as well. In 2017, he was instrumental in establishing Meherrin On Mission – a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to serving families through mission projects, disaster relief and educational scholarships. Combining the two things he was called to do, Barnes integrates faith with business, his principles driving practices that help care for his employees, community and the next generation of ag and life science leadership.

“Our company and our family have always had that vision that we would give back to the communities that we serve in our business,” Barnes says. “Hurricane Florence devastated our local community in eastern North Carolina. Through Meherrin on Mission, we were able to give our manpower to help clean up as well as provide supplies like generators and meals to help people get back on their feet.”

In addition Meherrin On a Mission is building an endowment to help fund scholarships in ag and life sciences at land-grant universities. Scholarships are distributed both to Meherrin customers and their employees.

“Our hope is that our scholarship recipients will get their degrees and then come back to their communities and work in the ag and life sciences industries,” Barnes says.

The mission work is both international and domestic, partnering with local ministries to administer after-school programming, skills training, health care and more.

“I approach my work not just as work, but as worship,” Barnes says. “I’m called to be in the workplace and in this agriculture industry, but I’m doing it to honor the people of our community and my creator.”

Barnes echoes his work ethic in his advice for students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: “Find out a little bit about yourself before you launch. I’ve learned that if you can spend a good 80% of your time in what you’re called to do, you’ll have a successful, fulfilling life.”