MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Garrett and Robin Dixon of Lee County are Alabama’s 2026 Outstanding Young Farm Family, the Alabama Farmers Federation announced this week.
The Dixons will receive $40,000 toward a Ford vehicle, a one-year lease on a John Deere tractor and a John Deere Gator as a result of their win. Sponsors include Alfa Insurance, John Deere, SunSouth, TriGreen, Alabama Ag Credit and Alabama Farm Credit.
Garrett Dixon, a skip generation farmer, began his journey in high school with a small starter herd of cattle and 100 acres of soybeans in college. He grew up farming in Salem on row crop fields his ancestors have cultivated since the 1800s.
The family – including the Dixons’ two children, Chandler Jane, 4, and Cash, 2 – now farms over 1,000 acres of peanut and cotton crops and has a full herd.
“The thing that I’m most proud of, as it relates to the farm, is being able to instill a love in the farm and in agriculture in my children,” Garrett Dixon said in a video produced by ALFA. “Just being able to do everything I can so that if my children want to continue that they have an opportunity to do that.”
The couple met as students at Auburn University.
Outside of the farm, Robin Dixon is an agricultural sciences teacher and Future Farmers of America advisor at Smiths Station High School, where she said she hopes to help students develop a more personal relationship with the food they eat.
“Being an ag teacher and living on the farm is really a great opportunity to expose the students to real life agriculture because to them they buy their groceries in the grocery store, they get their meat and whatever, but they don’t really think about where it comes from,” she said in the video. “Coming from a personal perspective, it just means a little more to them.”
The Dixons have dedicated their time to service as well, with both holding leadership roles in Lee County Young Farmers.
Now a member of the Alabama Peanut Producers Association, Garrett Dixon previously chaired the State Young Farmers Committee. He is also a graduate of A.L.F.A. Leaders Class V and the Peanut Leadership Academy.
The Outstanding Young Farm Family contest involves two rounds of competition, with an application and in-person interview on the farm. Selection criteria include farm growth, profitability, ALFA involvement and civic service. Applicants must be between the ages of 18 and 35 and make half of their income from production agriculture.
The Dixon family will represent Alabama during the national American Farm Bureau Federation’s Achievement Award contest in Charlotte, North Carolina, in January.