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Nashville to New Franklin

Published April 2007
Story Source: Christine Tew, SNR NEWS@Missouri.edu

Gene Garrett still wants a chance to sing at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn. But the first endowed chair in agroforestry is not willing to trade his professional accomplishments for the spotlight and stage.

"Sometimes where we think we want to go isn't exactly where we want to go," Garrett said. "I love teaching. I love working with graduate students. I love making things better than when I came in."

On Monday, Feb. 19, 2007, School of Natural Resources Director Mark Ryan announced a $1.1 million donation to establish the H. E. "Gene" Garrett Chair in Agroforestry. Garrett will serve as the first chair in the position bearing his name.

In Mound City, Ill., Garrett was the lead singer of a local band with plans to make it big in country music. After high school, he moved in with his brother and sister-in-law in Nashville and took a job at a hot water heater plant. He wrote songs in his spare time.

"I was down there six months or so," he said. "I realized that there had to be a better way to make money than what I was doing."

The young man who told his high school principal, "Mr. Evers, my formal education ends tonight," after graduation went back to the classroom. Garrett studied forestry at Southern Illinois University, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Dave.

After finishing his graduate program, Garrett returned to MU and started looking for a research focus. Getting started in agroforestry was "accidental," Garrett said. A friend from his Ph.D. program was working for Hammonds Products at the time. Ninety-nine percent of their black walnut harvest was from wild stands in the early 1970s.

"We were talking about planting black walnut in straight rows with some other kind of agronomic crop down the middle," Garrett said. "Hammonds Products, of course, was sold on the idea because they wanted to get more walnut planted."

"I realized that there are all kinds of opportunities for trees on farms, and with that we started expanding," Garrett said. He partnered with Bill Kurtz, another young face in the forestry department, to sort through the options for combining trees and traditional row crops. Kurtz handled the economic assessment, and Garrett analyzed the biological interactions.

"In those early years, we called it multicropping," Garrett said. "Then I got into the literature and realized that what we were doing wasn't new. It was already popular in the tropics."

The original agroforestry research began in the late 1970s on land in southwest Missouri, near Stockton. On Feb. 14, 1994, Gene Garrett submitted a proposal to bring agroforestry research to land near New Franklin, Mo., to Roger Mitchell, dean of the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

The proposal suggested naming the property the Agroforestry and Horticulture Research Center. Mitchell chose to recognize the more than 50 years of horticulture research on the land with the Horticulture and Agroforestry Research Center title.

"There were fewer than 300 acres out there then," Garrett said. "There are more than 660 now. Seventy or more percent is agroforestry. We're out of land again," he said. "Our program has grown by leaps and bounds. We've come a long way since 1975."

The University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry was established in 1998.

The $1.1 million donation from Doug Allen to endow an agroforestry chair is a big step toward securing the future of the Center, said Mark Ryan, director of the MU School of Natural Resources.

In 2005, Allen donated through his estate to establish and maintain the Allen Research and Education Project Site on 510 acres near Laurie, Mo., Ryan said. The first grant for agroforestry came from the Missouri Department of Conservation and was for $25,000, Garrett said. Those dollars initiated the entire program.

"Without the science, you don't know what the potential is," he said. "I'm in my 31st year here, and it has taken me this long to build credibility. It takes so long to get the understanding and the recognition."

The program continues to grow as agroforestry practices gain popularity with landowners, and events like the annual Chestnut Roast draw thousands to New Franklin.

"I'm so thankful for Doug Allen and all he has done for our program here. I don't even think he realizes just how much he has done for us," Garrett said. "I am so very thankful for the opportunities the School of Natural Resources has provided me over the years."

The success of agroforestry has not completely driven dreams of the spotlight from his head, however. "Had I taken a little bit different approach, and hung in there a little bit longer, I honestly believe I could have made it in country music," Garrett said. "I wouldn't change one thing that has happened to me professionally."

"I wouldn't give it up. I wouldn't trade. But I'd still like to have one night at the Grand Ole Opry – just the opportunity to sing one song."