Bank seeks $40M in unpaid loans from NC senator’s family farm. She says it’s ‘offensive’

One of the nation’s biggest growers of sweet potatoes has been put into receivership after defaulting on more than $40 million in loans, Nash County court records show. Now the state senator whose family owns the farm says the bank has been overly aggressive, alleging that it has been using her political career as leverage for the debt collection efforts.

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In a new court filing Monday, a bankruptcy attorney representing Sen. Lisa Stone Barnes and Spring Hope-based Barnes Family Farms — the family farming empire — questioned why she’s named in the lawsuit at all. It also asks for a closer accounting of how much she and her husband, and the various farming companies in his name, actually owe.

The new legal filing says the lender, Rabo Agrifinance, is engaging in conduct “offensive to public policy, as it seeks to use Lisa Barnes’ public and political capital as intangible collateral to [guarantee] repayment of her husband’s business obligations.”

Lawyers for the bank declined to comment Monday.

Barnes Family Farms has expanded its eastern North Carolina footprint since the 1960s to become one of the biggest vegetable growers of any type in the Southeast. The company manages more than 20,000 acres of farmland in areas around Rocky Mount and Wilson, where it also grows tobacco, soybeans, peanuts, wheat and watermelons.

While the new legal filing from the Barneses questions some of the details, it does acknowledge some of the financial difficulties alleged in the bank’s initial lawsuit seeking payment for the loans.

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Barnes told WRAL in a separate statement that it won’t affect her commitment to her state Senate district covering Nash, Franklin and Vance counties — which she was reelected to in November with 51% of the vote.

“Like many farmers, our family has faced tough times as the agricultural industry endures unprecedented challenges,” she said. “We worked tirelessly to overcome them, but entering a voluntary limited receivership became a necessary step toward building a stronger future for our farm. Farming is central to who we are, and we remain determined to come out of this stronger than ever. While this is a personal matter, it does not impact my commitment to serving in the North Carolina Senate with the same strength and dedication that define our family and our work.”

Barnes Family Farms and a series of related businesses took out multiple loans starting in 2014 from Rabo Agrifinance, a lending arm of Netherlands-based RaboBank, court records and county property records show. Those included $25 million for crops, plus millions more to buy land and farming equipment. Rabo Agrifinance hasn’t been paid back, the company alleged in a lawsuit late last year. Court records show farming property in Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties listed as collateral for the loans.

Much of the Barnes companies’ land, equipment and crops are now in the hands of a court-ordered receiver who is empowered to operate the business, or sell everything, in order to make as much money back for the bank as possible.

A court order from Nash County Superior Court Judge Timothy Wilson in November says revenues from the business “are either not being collected or are not being paid to [Rabo Agrifinance] and are thus being lost, wasted, transferred, concealed or impaired.”

The Barneses and their businesses are attempting to limit how much the bank might have access to. Their Monday motion seeks to protect Lisa Barnes and any of her own property and businesses, as well as property and businesses in their childrens’ names.

Barnes’ husband, who manages the farming businesses, is Johnny Barnes, a prominent agricultural community leader with roles at N.C. State University, the North Carolina Farm Bureau and other organizations. Both Barneses are named individually as defendants in Rabo’s lawsuit, along with half a dozen companies they control as part of their farming enterprise.

Tough times for NC farmers

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The situation comes amid a challenging time for sweet potato farmers in North Carolina, which is the country’s biggest exporter of the root vegetable.

Hurricanes Helene and Debby, plus periods of drought and extreme heat at the start of the growing season, combined to reduce yields of the crop in the state by between 30% and 45% in 2024, according to Michelle Grainger, the executive director of the North Carolina Sweetpotato Commission, a trade group.

The drop likely led to about $124 million in lost income for producers during the year, Grainger told state lawmakers last month during a hearing before a House agriculture committee.

The financial struggles also come as eastern North Carolina shifts away from agriculture and as more healthcare and biotechnology companies gravitate toward the region.

As recently as 2009, Barnes Family Farms was the 12th-biggest private employer in Nash County, with hundreds of workers. The state tracks the approximate number of workers at all large employers and compiles annual lists of the 25 biggest in each county. By 2016, Barnes Family Farms had cut its workforce and dropped in the rankings, that data shows. It hasn’t appeared in the rankings again since then.

Nash County’s biggest employer in every year since 2015 has been Hospira. The Pfizer subsidiary manufactures vaccines — including Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccines — in a Rocky Mount factory. Last year, biopharmaceutical companies and manufacturers in other industries announced plans to bring more than 3,000 jobs to Wilson, Edgecombe and Pitt counties.

Agriculture is still a big industry in eastern North Carolina, even amid a changing economic landscape. North Carolina grows more sweet potatoes than the rest of the country combined. Last growing season, American farms shipped 520 million pounds of sweet potatoes to market according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nearly 70% of that total came from North Carolina.

WRAL reporter Heidi Kirk contributed to this article.