 He later earned a law degree from Alabama A&M University in 1989.Around 1970, Dr. Whatley, who started his professional career at Tuskegee University, began championing "smaller and smarter" as a successful strategy for small farmers, rather than competing for the same market as large farmers, and going broke in the process.Small farmers, he advised, should not raise commodity crops such as grains, but should instead raise higher-value crops such as berries and grapes and market them to a loyal group of customers (target