From technological advances in agriculture and manufacturing to communities investing in creative business startups, innovation abounds in north Mississippi.
Written by Eugene Stockstill | Illustrated by Frank Estrada
There’s lots of good economic news in Northeast Mississippi these days.
At the close of 2024, unemployment sat at record lows in Mississippi, and gross state product and business development were enjoying slight increases, according to the marketing firm IBSWorld.
But what trends are driving the economy in this part of the state today and taking it to new places in the future?
Agriculture is king, accounting for 17.4% of the state’s workforce, according to the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce. That said, today’s farming is not your granddaddy’s farming.
For starters, lots of people farmed in previous generations. These days, new technology continues to change the game, and the biggest bang from ag businesses is the products they produce, not the jobs they create.
“We have seen a trend towards more and more larger producers than we did a generation ago,” said Dr. Brian Mills, associate professor of agriculture at Mississippi State. “A lot of this is due to the increase in equipment costs and land. Larger producers are able to take advantage of economies of scale and spread those high costs across more acres.
“Another thing we are seeing is more technology being involved in agriculture than in the past. Producers are able to use yield maps, soil maps, soil moisture sensors and other technologies to collect more data on their operation. This allows them to make more accurate recommendations and become more efficient in their inputs.”
Drone technology is also allowing farmers to become more adept with livestock At the close of 2024, unemployment sat at record lows in Mississippi, and gross state product and business development were enjoying slight increases, according to the marketing firm IBSWorld.
But what trends are driving the economy in this part of the state today and taking it to new places in the future?
Agriculture is king, accounting for 17.4% of the state’s workforce, according to the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce. That said, today’s farming is not your granddaddy’s farming.
For starters, lots of people farmed in previous generations. These days, new technology continues to change the game, and the biggest bang from ag businesses is the products they produce, not the jobs they create.
“We have seen a trend towards more and more larger producers than we did a generation ago,” said Dr. Brian Mills, associate professor of agriculture at Mississippi State. “A lot of this is due to the increase in equipment costs and land. Larger producers are able to take advantage of economies of scale and spread those high costs across more acres.
“Another thing we are seeing is more technology being involved in agriculture than in the past. Producers are able to use yield maps, soil maps, soil moisture sensors and other technologies to collect more data on their operation. This allows them to make more accurate recommendations and become more efficient in their inputs.”
Drone technology is also allowing farmers to become more adept with livestock management, soil analysis, crop monitoring and spraying.
“I think we will continue to see an increase in the use of technology, with autonomy becoming more and more prevalent,” Mills said. “Finding farm labor is always difficult, so autonomy may be able to alleviate some of those issues.”
Mills said that with crop prices decreasing and business costs remaining the same, farmers need to make use of available technology to continue to maximize their yields.
In a manufacturing hub like Tupelo, another change in the past few generations is simple but profound, said David Rumbarger, president and CEO of the Tupelo Community Development Foun-dation. Your grandfather could graduate from high school, go to work for a local company, work there for 40 years and retire from the same company, too. Today’s marketplace simply does not work like that.
“You have to have a skill to compete,” Rumbarger said, and in Lee County, that means manufacturing. “There (used to be) cracks in the economy that unskilled people could fill. Not today.”
Yes, Walmart is the state’s biggest employer. Yes, two big banks (Cadence and Renasant) are headquartered in Tupelo. And, yes, North Mississippi Health Services pumps mega resources into the area’s economy. “We can’t supply enough people for them,” he said.
But 20% of the county’s econ-omy comes from the manufacturing sector. Toyota, of course, is the biggest, with the huge Blue Springs plant in Union County employing 2,000 and a separate parts facility in Tupelo that employs 520. And with this year’s new models rolling out, “there will be a flurry of activity,” Rumbarger said.
But they are not alone. Eight other manufacturing companies from Canada and Europe are calling Lee County home, including the German-Swiss firm Liebherr, which announced last year the construction of a $176 million facility at the HIVE Business Park.
“It’s really been exciting,” Rumbarger said. “Manufacturing is our bread and butter.”
The biggest change to pay attention to in the coming years, according to Rumbarger: AI. He said he recently participated in a Zoom meeting in which an AI unit took notes and produced a report that same day, offering an example.
That segues nicely into another trend to keep an eye on. Both Itawamba Community College and the University of Mississippi have state-of-the-art technology programs designed to prepare students for promising careers.
At Ole Miss, the Ridgeland-based company EdgeTheory has set up shop at Insight Park with an internship program for students in all majors. The purpose: to teach students how to use artificial intelligence to analyze data for social media outlets, hospitals and government agencies.
“These students will be a lot more valuable to an employer if they understand how narratives work,” Joe Stradinger, CEO of EdgeTheory, said in a story on the university’s website. “We want our interns to be more attractive to the marketplace.”
Additionally, last year Ole Miss opened the Duff Center for Science and Technology Innovation to focus on science, technology, engineering and math-related education for students. Read more about it on page 34.
And at ICC, 30 different programs award students certificates or associate degrees in technology related to everything from robotics to healthcare to automotive work and more.
“It matches up tremendously with other programs,” Rumbarger said, adding that visitors from across the country have gone away impressed with ICC’s level of sophistication in the technological marketplace.
West of Tupelo, a big change in Lafayette County was pinpointed in a study conducted several years ago by the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation. There was a time when Oxford was a university town and depended on the school for the vitality of its economy. The recent study found, however, that a much more give-and-take relationship had developed between Ole Miss, on the one hand, and the rest of the county and Oxford.
“People are coming to Oxford now,” said Ryan Miller, president and CEO of the foundation. “There is no question that Oxford has started to emerge with its own identity. It helps to have one of the most beautiful and most thriving universities (in the country). They do enjoy a symbiotic relationship.”
Ole Miss scored a record enrollment this school year, and Miller said he has high hopes for greater cooperation between the university and the city and county in years to come.
“We have the leadership in place,” Miller said. “There is much more of an opportunity to coordinate our efforts, more than in the past.”
Another encouraging demographic is that families whose children came to Ole Miss, often to play sports, fall in love with the area and wind up purchasing property and moving to Oxford or making it a second home, Miller said.
And when it comes to the future of this region’s economy, don’t underestimate the importance of the mom-and-pop factor: small businesses, in other words. Consider that in the past few years, this magazine has profiled handfuls of new small businesses filling important niches in the region, including a full-service pumpkin patch, a homegrown creamery and groovy restaurants.
“We have an environment that encourages people to take calculated risks,” Miller said.
Take Circle and Square Brewing, Oxford’s first microbrewery, which opened last year. Taylor Webb, one of the founders of the business, said things are going very well. He also put his finger on another important development: workers who want to live, work and socialize in the same geographic area.
“It’s not understatement to say the business is in a healthy spot,” Webb said. “There was a hole in the market.”
It seems that creative business startups have a way of creating community all on their own, and that, in turn, feeds into the overall economy.
“The amount of stuff you can do here . . . (and) Tupelo is growing as well,” Webb said. “Certainly, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
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