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Lane Pruitt cares about the next generation. He’s trying “to get ’em off their phones and out of the classroom and to do something with their hands and grow up the way I did: working. Somebody’s got to pass it on.”
So he’s involved in Future Farmers of America and the 4-H program. Teenagers work for him during the summer and when they’re out of school for holidays.
Pruitt wants them to have the same opportunity he had. Before and during high school, he worked for two or three livestock auctioneers. When he graduated from Arkansas State University in Beebe with an agri-business degree, Pruitt took a job there, managing its farm.
Then he saw a stockyard for sale and bought it. “I’m proud that I got to build my own business by myself,” Pruitt said. “I didn’t have handouts from any family — you know, nobody. Didn’t have a rich uncle or grandpa that left me everything I have. Just worked my way up, made it, and am still making a go of it.”
