What happened that day was scary:
He was alone on the tractor, just a kid, discing his grandpa’s field. He didn’t see the ditch until it was too late. It was “a great big ditch,” he says, one eroded by rain.
He and the tractor fell into it.
Nearly tipped over.
“Grandpa was milking cows, and he came out to move the tractor,” says Dr. Ray Ward, 86, looking back on that day. “I watched him drive it down to where the erosion wasn’t as bad so he could drive out again.
“I think it was that day – that vision of erosion I had – that made me think, ‘We can’t keep doing that.’”
Ward, an agronomist, has been helping improve the soil of this state, and this world, since founding Ward Laboratories four decades ago in Kearney. Over the years, he and his team of scientists have analyzed millions of samples of soil, water and plants while helping move ag producers to use the best practices for their land. He’s seen a world of change in how they now use science and data to make better decisions.
And if he had a hand in that change, he says, he’s happy.
“The mission is to help farmers and ranchers feed the world tomorrow,” he says. “The goal was not about making money. That’s the part of life that too many people get caught up in – it’s all about money. That drives me nuts at times. Of course, I had to make enough money to survive. “But what turned me on was knowing that I was helping farmers and ranchers survive.”
Ward was born in the dirt-poor days of the Great Depression, at a time when his grandpa and dad still farmed with horses. They bought their first tractor in 1943. They barely survived on their land near Western, Nebraska, in Saline County.
Crop yields were falling all over the state.
Year over year.
He likes to tell people about an old soil survey of Saline County that shows the average yield of corn was 48 bushels per acre in 1889. But by 1955, when he graduated from high school, he says, it had fallen …
To nine bushels.
The next year, it was eight.
Farmers didn’t know back then that minimal tillage and crop cover could help prevent erosion. They didn’t know that chemicals, added frugally and efficiently, could increase yields.
“I went to college and found out you could put nitrogen on, grow more corn, and told that to dad. I said, ‘Let’s add nitrogen.’ I learned that’s how we could survive.
“The yields are so much better now because we’re taking better care of the soil. I’ve been no-tilling on our farm in Western since 1994 – and in 30 years you can really see the difference.”
Nebraska’s soil, he says, is some of the best in the world. It’s called “Holdrege silt loam.” It’s why Nebraska farmers can produce so much.
One day, speaking to scientists in the Netherlands, Ward got to tour a soil museum that had samples from around the world. He saw “some really ugly stuff,” he says, like the sample of unproductive soil from China that had too much saline in it. But he turned the corner, he says, and there was a sample of beautiful Holdrege silt loam from Nebraska.
Healthy soil, he says, is a gift that will lift the next generations of farmers and ranchers, help them feed the world. With that in mind, he founded Ward Laboratories with his wife, Jolene, in 1983. They started out in just a three-bay garage, doing most of the work themselves while raising four kids.
“Jolene was the bookkeeper and receptionist and secretary, all those things, when we started the business. Everything I did, or do, she encouraged me to do.”
The early 1980s was a dirt-poor time to start an ag business, during the big ag crisis. They barely survived. But they kept working hard and eventually thrived. Ward Labs now has 32,000 square feet of state-of-the-art space. It has 50 fulltime employees, another 25 who work part time.
It has a reputation around the world.
“I always tell farmers and young people what I always was told when I was a kid – that no matter what the weather is like, no matter how you feel – the cows have to be milked twice a day and when you’re cultivating corn, you have to go to the end of the row to turn around. That means you’ve got to get the job done, no matter what.
“And that’s what we tried to do wherever we went.”
Dr. Ward likes to take people on tours of his labs as well as his family farm, which he uses as an outdoor classroom. A former longtime professor at University of Nebraska at Kearney, he especially loves to talk to little kids.
What’s the inside color of the rainbow?
It’s a physics question, he says: Blues on the inside, red on the outside.
He smiles.
“You ask an adult and they won’t tell you. They don’t know. But kids will tell you.”
Looking back, he’s surprised that kid on that tractor, stuck in that big ditch, ever got to do what he did. That kid had no life goal, he says, other than to farm with his grandpa and dad. He didn’t take chemistry in high school because he didn’t think he’d ever need it. He only went to college on a fluke, because of a scholarship. That kid had no idea he’d go on to earn a doctorate, start a business, travel the world, live to see his many great-grandkids grow and thrive – nine so far.
That kid was so shy.
“It was a struggle.”
One scary day in a college speech class his senior year, his words just wouldn’t come out. Embarrassed, he sat back down. (A few years later, though, during grad school, he borrowed a key to a classroom and practiced, night after night, until he got it right.)
Another day his senior year, at a watermelon feed, he saw a girl who seemed way too popular to approach. But by Valentine’s Day, he’d worked up the nerve to ask her out.
And he fell.
Head over heels.
Jolene.
“It’s amazing when you think how pretty she was.”
Don’t look!
During their early days, driving the Nebraska roads together, she used to tell him that. She didn’t want him to look over and see the bare fields, the blowing dirt, the big ditches eroded by rain.
Ward focused much of his time over the past few years taking care of her, visiting her in the nursing home. She had Parkinson’s disease. She passed away last fall.
They both felt so grateful, he says, looking back. That’s why they believed in giving back, especially to groups that help young people. They supported the local Kiwanis Club, 4-H, the hospital, their church.
Besides his outright gifts to the Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation, Ward recently became a lead supporter of its four-issue magazine for schoolkids called “Discover Nebraska: Agriculture Edition.” The magazine is part of the Foundation’s mission to promote ag literacy.
“I do it because I know it’s going to help kids, and I trust (the Foundation) to do it right.”
Ward also donated a mantle clock to a Nebraska Farm Bureau live charity auction – a clock he made by hand from wood from his farm. It was a popular auction item. He loves making clocks. Chopping wood is good exercise, he says, and it gives him time to think.
“I’m glad I was able to help.”
He’s still healthy. He still goes to work every day, takes a short nap after lunch. He plans to keep working another decade or so. Oldest grandson, Dr. Nick Ward, has taken the wheel, running Ward Laboratories now as its president.
His grandson shares the same goal, Ward says, of helping farmers and ranchers leave a better legacy for the next generation. And that’s really what it’s all about, he says – leave the world better than you found it.
Go to the end of the row, before turning around.
