Mississippi’s wonderful world of sweet potatoes.
For many Southerners, autumn doesn’t mark the arrival of cooler weather as much as it means football, family, and of course, a feast of epic proportions on Thanksgiving. And while turkey can be found on nearly every spread, the only other ingredient you’re sure to find on a Mississippi table is the sweet potato.
That’s partly because they’re sweet and delicious, as the name suggests, and partly because Mississippi simply grows a lot of them. Last year, farmers in the state produced the third-highest yield of sweet potatoes in the U.S., totaling 4.3 million hundredweight, or 100-pound bags, produced from 172 farms.
Sweet potatoes are grown throughout many of the valleys in north Mississippi, but the town of Vardaman, population 1,071 as of 2022, is the center of it all. Joe Edmondson, who farmed cotton and ran a gin for 26 years before establishing Topashaw Farms here to produce sweet potatoes, has an easy explanation why.
“A Vidalia onion that comes out of Vidalia, Georgia, tastes different from anywhere else you can get it, and a sweet potato pretty much tastes different from anywhere outside of the Vardaman area,” Edmondon said. “There have always been good potatoes growing here. My mother’s family, they were raising sweet potatoes over 100 years ago right here in this same area.”
There have always been good potatoes growing here. My mother’s family, they were raising sweet potatoes over 100 years ago right here in this same area.
These sweet, starchy root tubers have been on the menu for at least 5,000 years, when indigenous groups cultivated them in South and Central America. The vegetable’s long journey to Mississippi eventually passed through Tennessee, where, as Vardaman local Jan Cook explains, farmers didn’t have land for row crops like the sweet potato. Meanwhile, across the state line, Mississippi pig farmers had a surplus of fertile cropland with nothing growing on it. So, essentially, the farmers swapped.
Cook learned the history from earlier generations of family members, who have farmed here for more than a century, beginning with her grandfather, who was one of the first farmers to move here from Tennessee. Since 2010, she has worked at Sweet Potato Sweets, a shop that sells baked goods made with the local favorite. Although her mother started the shop with two friends in 1996, it has since become a Cook family business — her 92-year-old father, Paul Cook, owns it now.
“They just wanted people to be able to get a sweet potato pie in Vardaman,” Cook said. The shop opened part time at first, but as the business grew so did their hours. “They had rented a little spot, then it grew, and my mom bought a building, and they moved there. They quickly outgrew that building, and my dad built the building we’re in currently.”
Sweet Potato Sweets was ahead of its time, considering the explosion in popularity the sweet potato has enjoyed in recent years. Low in calories and fat but high in vitamins A, B and C, the vegetable contributes to a healthier immune system as well as benefits vision, heart and kidney functions. They’re so popular, in fact, that the global market for sweet potato fries, touted as a healthier alternative to French fries, is a billion-dollar concern on its own.
“The health benefits of sweet potatoes have been advertised a lot more than in the previous years, and I think that’s what has really boosted the market,” Edmonson says. “The fries are getting more popular, and now all the processors are doing a whole lot better job — they’ve got a lot of varieties, life waffle fries, spiced fries. They offer a lot of options.”
For the past five decades, the Sweet Potato Festival has also helped promote the vegetable to locals and visitors. The 51st edition, slated for Nov. 2 in downtown Vardaman, will feature an antique tractor show, live music and a pie-eating contest. Over Nov. 3-4, the town will crown the Sweet Potato Queen and King for babies and toddlers at Vardaman High School, followed by the Sweet Potato Queen contest for older age groups on Nov. 5.
Topashaw Farms has grown considerably thanks to the boost in awareness from these marketing efforts. Today, they not only grow sweet potatoes on their own 3,200-acre plot, but they also have another 2,500 acres worth of the crop grown for them by nearby farmers. Edmondson says about half of their sweet potatoes end up for sale in supermarkets, while the other half become sweet potato fries or other products.
The health benefits of sweet potatoes have been advertised a lot more than in the previous years, and I think that’s what has really boosted the market.
Sweet potatoes are a unique crop because farmers plant them twice. First, they plant potatoes in the soil in a process called bedding. Once those potatoes sprout, they collect all the slips and replant them to grow into the sweet potatoes they’ll eventually harvest in the fall. At Topashaw, workers use machinery such as chain diggers to pull them out of the ground, and then grade them in the field to determine which ones will go to market. Then, the potatoes are cleaned and stored — about 40,000 to a room — in a climate-controlled warehouse that monitors and automatically adjusts temperature and humidity.
Once they reach the market, sweet potatoes are consumed in a variety of ways. A recipe resource on Topashaw’s website has plenty of creative ways to prepare them, including cakes, pies, and even a pizza recipe using roasted sweet potatoes as the main topping.
At Sweet Potato Sweets, which sells sweet potato-based breads, pies, bon bons, fudge, and other treats, Cook says sweet potato pie is the best seller, followed by sweet potato bread and muffin tops. The locals, she says, tend to favor their sweet potato sausage balls and sweet potato pecan pie.
“If we weren’t here and if you came to Vardaman, you couldn’t get anything ready to eat with sweet potatoes in it from Vardaman,” Cook says. “Everything we sell has sweet potatoes as an ingredient.”
But there are plenty of others who prefer to keep their sweet potatoes simple.
“No doubt, I like the casseroles and stuff like that, but my favorite is pretty much the old-fashioned way,” Edmondson said. “I love just a simple baked potato — I was kind of raised on them.”
