Anita Barnett Fuqua didn’t grow up on a farm.
But her family has been involved in agriculture for at least five generations, she says.
Her father was a trucker, who hauled livestock.
And her mother worked at Farm Credit.
Fuqua herself is operations manager at Helena Agri-Enterprises in Owensboro.
Helena has more than 500 locations with more than 6,000 employees, according to its website.
“I manage four warehouses — one here, one in Springfield and two in Illinois,” Fuqua said. “We have 10 full-time personnel here and 20 total. My job is to get the product out the door in a timely manner, hire the truck drivers and warehouse personnel and make sure everything works.”
The company is a wholesaler of seed, fertilizer and chemicals.
“This warehouse does about $100 million a year in business,” Fuqua said.
When she was in high school, Fuqua showed hogs in FFA and for a few years, she and her husband, Steve, grew tons pumpkins on eight acres in western Daviess County.
They sold pumpkins to stores as far away as Louisville.
But they gave up Fuqua Wholesale Pumpkins a couple of years ago, she said.
“I have a passion for agriculture,” Fuqua said. “It’s been my family’s way of life for several generations. There’s job security because people will always need to eat.”
She started her career at Miles Farm Supply 28 years ago and moved to Helena 17 years ago.
“More and more women are going into agriculture every day,” Fuqua said. “Today, Helena is almost dominated by women. When I started at Miles, I was one of only a few women. Now, the field is about 50-50 women and men.”
She said, “I don’t think of myself as a boss. People work with me, not for me. And I would never ask anyone to do a job that I wouldn’t do.”
Her husband, Steve, is retired from his job as assistant chief of the Daviess County Fire Department.
He now works for a farmer near Stanley.
And their oldest son, Evan, is preparing for a career in agriculture after college.
He’ll be at least the sixth generation of the family working with the farming community.
