Luke Griffith and Growers
Growers has many talented and hard-working representatives across many states and provinces. Most, if not all, of these representatives promote Growers because it has revolutionized, in one way or another, their own operations and/or the operations of people they are close to. In this article, we will be highlighting one such representative: Luke Griffith.
Luke grew up farming with his dad, Dan, on a farm in Minnesota. They continue to raise alfalfa, corn, soybeans, oats, and beef cattle. When Luke was of age, he began working for an agronomic firm, giving the sort of advice Growers is usually in conflict with. He continually tried convincing Dan that he wasn't using enough fertilizer (Dan used maybe 15% of the recommended amounts of dry), yet Dan continued to get decent and profitable yields and good quality crops. Luke could not figure this out, and found it frustrating. He had questions for his superiors, but they didn't have the answers and didn't like his questions.
In 2010, Luke attended a Growers informational meeting put on by District Manager Dave McIver, and lead by Director of Research Jim Halbeisen. He found that a lot of the questions he had were answered at that meeting and through subsequent questioning from Jim. Jim presented him with a challenge: "Prove me right, prove me wrong, or do nothing at all. "Luke and Dan took him up on that challenge in 2011 and, in Luke's words, "We keep trying to prove Jim wrong, and keep moving the farm into a more sustainable, profitable direction."
After five years working for the agronomic firm, Luke struck out on his own with much different ideas for what makes a successful and sustainable farm than he'd had five years prior. His main goal is to help people preserve the farm in order to pass it along to future generations. Both he and Dan love the Growers Program on their own farm, and believe it holds the key to the sustainability of the farm. He uses a multi-pronged approach in his consulting, including promoting the Growers Program, planting cheaper non-GMO seed, encouraging farmers to try ideas out for themselves rather than only relying on "expert" advice, disproving false knowledge-such as mining soil-and focusing on farm profitability.
A lot of Luke's job is explaining and showing people that a lot of conventional agricultural knowledge is, in fact, wrong. A funny anecdote to back up his point is that, even though Dan consistently raised quality crops with a good yield, he didn't even know what the analysis on the bag of fertilizer meant. He had knowledge, but it was gained from years of hands-on experience, not the type that is typically held up as useful. Some of the false knowledge that Luke is combating is yield potential loss from non-GMO seed and mining the soil of nutrients (why worry about a problem that is hundreds of years away, if at all).
All of this said, Luke believes that there is change coming to the agricultural landscape. For many years, there has been a shift away from the owner of the farm making decisions, away from them doing the work and seeing the results themselves. Rather, they are told what to do and what they will see by "experts" who are rarely held accountable for the (in)accuracy of their predictions. He is seeing a shift back away from this, and believes it is very good news for Growers and farmers everywhere.
To conclude and illustrate Luke's issue with mainstream agricultural knowledge, please read as follows: Agronomists are like weathermen in that they try to predict outcomes, but when the weatherman is wrong, everyone knows it whereas when the agronomist is wrong, nobody does.
This is an excerpt from the Early Fall Growers Solution (2019) written by Luke Griffith & Zach Smith.
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