George Herman Wedgworth (1928-2016) was born in Starkville, Mississippi, the first of three children. The family moved to Belle Glade in 1930, where his father, Herman Wedgworth, was the first plant pathologist at the University of Florida Everglades Environmental Station. After two years, Herman left to establish his own farm, and started a fertilizer plant and the Wedgworth Supply House to provide supplies and equipment for local growers. In 1938 he was killed in a farming accident.
George graduated from Belle Glade High School in 1946, where he met his future wife, Peggy Mateel Rawls (1927-2014). They graduated from Michigan State College, where George received a degree in agricultural engineering in 1950. He and his mother, Ruth Springer Wedgworth (1903-1995), developed Wedgworth Farms, Inc. until she retired in 1986. George Wedgworth helped to build the first mobile celery-harvesting unit in 1950 and founded the Florida Celery Exchange. They gradually changed to sugar production after Castro’s takeover of Cuba in 1959.
Wedgworth founded the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida a year later, which was Belle Glade’s largest employer in 2002 with 900 workers. While George Wedgworth runs the co-op, his youngest child, Dennis, manages the farm and Wedgworth Inc. , the state’s largest fertilizer company. A grower said of Wedgworth, “He’s been a true visionary who takes time to understand how all the pieces fit together. ”
George Wedgworth and his sisters, Helen and Barbara, donated $1 million to the Everglades Research and Education Center where their father worked and a laboratory was named the Herman H. and Ruth S. Wedgworth Building.