Rachael Sharp, the lawyer who returned to the family farm and helped her 78-year-old father keep the business going: "This farm wouldn't exist without her"

In South Carolina, he shares the operation of a seed company founded by his grandparents in 1948 with his father; he incorporated artificial intelligence to simplify administrative tasks and the story reached a Super Bowl commercial - 6 minutes reading time In a 1948 photograph, Don Carlos Sharp Jr. and his wife, Camille Lawton Cunningham, appear sitting on the steps of a house, each holding a child in their arms. The residence and land in Allendale, South Carolina, had remained unoccupied for more than a decade. An operation began there that would go through a fire, economic crises, and difficulties in passing from one generation to the next. Almost eight decades later in the same place, his granddaughter, Rachael Sharp, shares with her father the operation of Sharp & Sharp Certified Seed, an agricultural company that produces and processes seeds. The family story also reached the 2026 Super Bowl, in an OpenAI commercial showing how the Sharps incorporated ChatGPT into daily work. The history of the establishment is reconstructed in the family blog, where Rachael recounts that her grandfather was a World War II veteran and had studied agronomy at Clemson University thanks to the educational assistance program for veterans known as the GI Bill. When he settled with his family in Allendale, on land linked to his wife's family, he still had no experience as a farmer. A purchase financed by a loan changed the course of the business. According to Rachael, in the site of the establishment, in the early fifties, Don acquired a seed cleaner that allowed him to process his own production and offer that service to other producers. It was also his entry into the market for certified seeds, which ended up becoming one of the family's central activities. His son, Don Carlos Sharp III, joined in 1970 after graduating from Clemson. The operation grew, but in September 1973, according to the family story, a spark from a Coca-Cola vending machine started a fire during the night. The fire spread to the sheds where they stored seeds, cleaning equipment, tractors, and harvesting machinery. The firefighters managed to protect the house. The rest demanded months of debris removal and years of recovery. The family had the cleaning equipment insured, but the stored seeds and most of the tractors lacked coverage. The compensation allowed for the replacement of the equipment, the replenishment of other assets was gradual, according to the reconstruction published in the family blog. To the production difficulties was added the challenge of dividing the inheritance without compromising the operation of the farm. A case study from the Law School of the University of South Carolina describes that the founders left the property equally to their two sons: Don, who worked at the establishment, and his sister, Camille Wilson Sharp, who did not participate in the activity. The business did not have the cash necessary for one to buy the other's share. After a negotiation that affected the relationship between them, they agreed on an exit that allowed the operation to continue: Don continued with the activity and his sister kept about 500 acres—around 202 hectares—for which she received rents, according to the university's analysis. The family had anticipated that Rachael's brother would assume the continuity of the business, but personal circumstances changed that expectation. Rachael ended up incorporating and took responsibility for accounting, finance, and logistics. Rachael obtained her law degree from the University of South Carolina in 2012, according to her biography published by the South Carolina Farm Bureau. Upon returning, she found an activity in which office tasks required as much attention as crop decisions. "This farm would not exist without her," said her father during an interview by Pam Caraway for Farm Progress. Currently, the family cultivates soybean, corn, wheat, cotton, peanuts, oats, and rye. In a video published by AgSouth Farm Credit, father and daughter explained that their work includes different stages: storing the production, cleaning it, processing it, bagging it, and subjecting it to testing in the South Carolina seed laboratory in Columbia before marketing it. In another intervention, disseminated by Soybean Research & Information Network, Rachael detailed the certification controls. The process begins with an application that documents the origin of the seeds used. Then inspections are carried out in the field to check the characteristics of the crop and detect plants that do not correspond to the expected type. The controls continue once the seeds are bagged and stored. In the blog, Rachael also shows the work before planting. During the period of least activity in the plots, they condition soybeans with a screening machine that separates soil, residues, broken seeds, and weeds. Then they weigh and package the product. In parallel, they check tractors and planters, coordinate inputs, and organize the next tasks. In recent months the family was in the news because Rachael began to use artificial intelligence to calculate agrochemical purchases and prepare mandatory reports on water use. In her interview with Farm Progress, she explained that "those calculations help reduce stored surpluses and that preparing the reports previously demanded between two and three days." She also clarified that she reviews the forms completed with the assistance of the tool because they may contain errors. According to AgSouth Farm Credit, after mentioning her experience with ChatGPT in a technology forum at Clemson, in March 2025, she received "a contact from OpenAI". The conversation led to a visit to the establishment and a commercial appearance linked to the Super Bowl. In the same video, the Sharps highlighted a relationship of about 75 years with the Farm Credit system and the value of working with entities that understand the financial particularities and the needs of the agricultural sector. The young woman recounted that she digitized a notebook where her father records the crops since 1971. The images show how they use the tool to record peanut loads from the field, prepare water consumption reports, and organize the stored seeds. Among these tasks, Don expressed his pride in his daughter's return and her dedication to continuing the business, according to the video "Generations of farming", disseminated by OpenAI.