Who’ll Take Over The Farm? A Vidalia Homecoming Story – Watch on YouTube or On TV

Family Farming Continues To Find Ways To Flourish

REIDSVILLE, GA – It’s April, 2010. Two young brothers frolic in a Vidalia onion field, “helping” their father and his crew begin that year’s harvest of the world’s most famous onion. Their dad, John Shuman, oversees the work crews in a flurry of activity that kicks off the annual process of harvesting millions of Vidalia onions by hand to head to an eagerly awaiting market.

John Shuman is the founder and CEO of Shuman Farms, which brings onions to market under the RealSweet and Mr. Buck’s labels. He’s the son of a Vidalia onion grower and Hall of Fame member, Buck Shuman. And he comes from a long line of farmers in southeast Georgia.
The boys are still in elementary school. As Shuman watches them play at work, there’s a glint in his eye.

“I hope,” he tells an accompanying reporter, “and I think and pray about it all the time, but I just hope one of these boys grows up and continues this company.”

Shuman was expressing a concern that’s increasingly common in agriculture today. Farming is a tough job. The hours are long, the work is hard, there are a lot of missed birthdays and family events: A perishable product doesn’t care what your personal plans are.

As a result, fewer and fewer sons and daughters are following in the footsteps of their fathers, or grandfathers, or great-great-great grandfathers in some cases. They’re leaving farming and moving into other callings. And there is great concern over who’ll come home and continue to feed us.

And that was the case even on this gorgeous April morning in 2010. “I don’t ever push it on them,” Shuman said of his then-elementary aged boys Luke and Jake. “They know it’s here. They know it’s an option for them. But I’d never try to unduly influence what they decide to do with their lives.”

Flash forward 14 years. The Shuman empire has continued to grow, making RealSweet the predominant market brand both for Vidalia onions and their offseason counterpart, Peruvian sweet onions, grown from the same seed in similar soil in South America.

Vidalia onions can only come from one small area of Georgia, about a 50-mile radius around the namesake town. Only there do you find the perfect combination of soil types and climate that make an onion that’s as savory as conventional varieties, but is also so sweet you can eat it like an apple (and people do). The State of Georgia actually owns the trademark to the crop and administers it to provide protection from competition.

The Vidalia is only available from about mid-April until the end of September. But success breeds success: Chefs and consumers discovered Vidalia onions in the 1980s and they quickly became so popular there was year-round demand. Only Peru, with its opposite seasons, provided a suitable cousin to the Vidalia and now your sweet onions in the supermarket come from there September-March.

And now, in April 2024, there is a new face in the fields and packinghouses of Shuman Farms. Actually, it’s an old(er) face that’s been there many times before… just not in a professional capacity. This year, after completing his education in agricultural business managements at the University of Georgia, older brother Luke Shuman has come home to go to work with his dad.

That’s the subject of a new Season 5 episode of the RFD-TV Network’s (DirecTV, Dish, Cable, Sling) popular series Where The Food Comes From, appropriately titled Homecoming, airing Friday Sept. 27 at 10 p.m. and again at 1:30 a.m. And for the first time, anyone can now view this and all episodes of the show free on YouTube @WhereTheFoodComesFrom.

“I’m starting at the bottom,” Luke says enthusiastically. Technically he’s the assistant packinghouse manager. In reality, he’s beginning his professional learning process. “Dad has made it clear I’ll spend time in every area of the company, learning it all and working my way up. He’s not just going to hand over the keys.”

Luke and his father give a reporter a tour of the facilities. Machines whir and blur, countless numbers of onions follow conveyors through sorters where they’re then routed to machines that pack them in bags or boxes accordingly. Workers scurry around loading pallets and beeping forklifts make a nonstop parade from the packinghouse to the storage room and into trucks waiting to take the crop to market.

Another Shuman soon joins the group – younger brother Jake, who’s home on break from Georgia Southern University. The reporter – the same one who was there in 2010 and many times since – takes a step back and realizes he’s staring at the future of a legacy industry. For it’s on this trip home that Jake, too, announces his intentions to come home after graduation next year and join his brother in the trenches.

Later, in a private moment, John Shuman reveals, “You can’t imagine how full my heart is. I’m overwhelmed and grateful beyond anything I can express. My prayers have been answered.

Mom Lana has much the same response, not surprisingly. “It’s really just incredible to think – to know, now – that they’re coming home. They’re going to start their families here, they’re going to raise our grandchildren here. As a mom, you dread the thought of an empty nest. And it just fills me with gratitude to understand and realize we’ll never have to go through that. We’ll have a lot of people in the kitchen, but they’ll be right there with us!”

And later that evening the entire Shuman family, including Luke’s fiancé Addie Lee, do indeed gather in the kitchen to make a meal and break bread together. Jake and his brother – expert chefs both – together whip up an amazing pasta Bolognese (chockful of Vidalia onions fresh from the field, of course).

The sons are not yet the father… but they are well on the way. Already, they talk about the things that are important to them: Quality of product, compassion and fair treatment top the list. Their commentary sounds much like their father’s.

It’s all enough to leave WTFCF host and producer Chip Carter with a tear in his own eye. “Most of the stories we tell are one-and-done,” Carter says. “We meet amazing people as we travel the country and tell their stories and often never see them again. But there are some you get to keep coming back to. I’ve known John Shuman since 2010. I’ve watched these boys grow up. This family is part of my family. I think I’m as proud as John and Lana are and you can really feel that emotion in this show.”

Where The Food Comes From travels the country visiting farms and going up and down the supply chain to show all the invisible hands that keep the world fed. There are 54 episodes available on the show’s YouTube channel now, and that number will grow to 65 by the end of the year.

For more on Shuman Farms or the show, visit www.WhereTheFoodComesFrom.com.

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