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November 17, 2000

Gee: ‘Be involved in everything’

By Mike Barnett
Editor

Andrew Gee’s secret recipe for successful agriculture: be involved in everything. “I’ve had people ask how do you be successful in farming and my answer would be, you just have to be involved in everything,” this 29-year-old producer says. “We do lots of custom farming and custom harvesting. We grow every crop on the spectrum that’s grown in this area except for vegetables. And livestock, you just have to be involved in everything, so that something carries the weight when something else doesn’t pay off.”

Andrew and his brother began their operation seven years ago by custom farming around 1,000 acres. Custom farming is still an important part of their operation because that income allows them to pay for their equipment, part of their living expenses, and allows them to use any farming profits to purchase land. Today, in addition to custom farming, they grow corn, cotton, sorghum and wheat on owned and rented land. For the first time this year, they had a soybean crop. And they graze stocker cattle in the winter.

Management—Andrew’s strong point—is critical to his diverse operation. “Management is crucial,” he says. “You have to manage your help. You have to be able to manage the markets. The weather. Finances.
Management is just extremely critical and you’ve got to be on top of it at all times.”

Weather, he says, is a constant obstacle in the Hereford area. Take this year for example. His dryland cotton crop took off in the spring, only to wither due to drought. Now, with wet conditions over much of the Panhandle, he’s struggling to find open weather to harvest his irrigated cotton and soybean crops.

Overcoming adverse weather conditions, in fact, is built into Andrew’s management plan. “We’ve found the best way to overcome that is we’ve got to be timely,” he says. “Have your tillage and your planting, your harvesting done as timely as you can. When the weather’s right you push just as hard as you can. Everybody works just as hard as they can to get the job done so that when it does rain, you can take advantage of it.”

Another part of his plan is keeping good employees: “You can’t make an operation run without good employees,” Andrew says. “We try to help them as much as we can. We’ve got one right now that goes to college every other day. We try to be flexible in his schedule. And we help him get started in farming as best we can. We have another employee we’ve help-ed buy some cattle, let them graze on our property, to kind of help and encourage him to keep working hard.”

Third and extremely important in Andrew’s operation is marketing. It’s something he deals with daily. “There’s a lot of risk in that and that’s what kind of makes or breaks you...if you can get things marketed at a profitable level,” he relates. “On the grains we do basis contracts and forward contracts for silage. On cotton, we’re in the pool and hedge. Cattle we hedge and forward contract. You have to watch the markets continuously. And you hope to pick the right time.”

Andrew’s wife, Kimberly, takes care of the books for the two corporations and the partnership, along with taking care of their two children, Jonathan and Caitlyn.

She admits farming is a hard life. But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“The most important part of it is our kids’ lives, I think, because they get to see how the food is grown that they eat and the clothes, how they’re made,” she says. “There’s more family time, I guess, because he (their oldest child) gets to spend more time with dad than if Andrew had a job in town.”

As for Andrew, short-term, he’d like to get this year’s crop out. Long-term, he’d like to continue to grow his operation, pay his debt down and “see my kids some day be able to farm also, if they’d like to.”

Andrew was born into farming and has known agriculture would be his vocation since he was “little-bitty. It’s all I ever wanted to do,” he says. He says his love for farming continues for a very simple reason: “I just personally enjoy seeing a good crop thrive. I get a lot of fulfillment out of growing a good crop and good cattle. It’s enjoyable, hands on work. It’s a lot of hard hours, but we enjoy it.”

This young farmer also sees a good future in agriculture despite uncooperative weather and low prices.

“I feel agriculture has a good future, if we just get out there and hustle, work hard,” he says. “I’m looking forward to the future of having my son grow up with me, farming, if he desires. I think there’s a strong future.”