Growing Ag Profitability Through Research at DREC
As a child, Jeff Gore, Ph.D., Director of Mississippi State University’s Delta Research and Extension Center (DREC) in Stoneville, loved to be outside. He was greatly interested in the natural world.
“Growing up, I didn’t stay inside playing video games,” recalls Gore. “If it was a nice day, I was outside playing in a creek looking for salamanders, snakes, frogs and whatever insects I could collect. Growing up in the South, I got to do a lot of hunting and fishing. I fished almost all year around.”
During high school, he was primarily interested in athletics—wrestling, football and track—not academics. He played football, ran track and competed in wrestling.
“My best sport was wrestling,” says Gore. “My senior year, I won the state individual championship in my weight class and we won the team championship my junior and senior years.”
He grew up in Southside outside of Gadsden, Ala., in a place he describes as “a miniature Mississippi Delta” where cotton, corn and soybeans were grown. After high school, he wanted to make a living hunting and fishing. But with few jobs doing that, he did construction work for five years.
Construction activity can be very cyclical.
“It took a lot of luck to start your own business and make a career out of it,” says Gore. “I worked with a lot of guys who were fantastic carpenters but never made it in that field and didn’t have much to show for their hard work. That pushed me to go to college. I started attending night classes at the junior college when I was 21.”
Initially he majored in wildlife biology. When he transferred to Auburn University, a professor told him that jobs were scarce and didn’t pay well. That same semester at Auburn, he took an entomology course and was fascinated. He was getting top grades. He took a second entomology course, and was hooked.
“My entomology professors really encouraged me,” says Gore. “I decided to switch my major to entomology, a very broad field. I had the choice of going into ag and pest management or stream ecology. I went to work for the Alabama Extension Service as an entomologist working with pests of pecans and turf.”
When considering graduate schools, he chose Louisiana State University working on cotton and other row crops. He got both his master’s degree and Ph.D., in entomology from LSU working with cotton entomologist Roger Leonard, Ph.D.
“One thing I really enjoyed about working with Dr. Leonard is that he wasn’t on the main campus at Baton Rouge but was located at a research center in Northeast Louisiana like where I am here in Stoneville,” says Gore. “It is great to be able to spend time close to farmers in an area where you see the benefits of your research.”
After earning a Ph.D., he had three job opportunities and chose DREC because he loved cotton entomology—and the warmer winters in the South.
When he came to Stoneville in 2002, Bt cotton seeds genetically engineered to resist bollworms had just been out a few years. At the time, growers were required to plant refuges for every certain percentage of Bt cotton planted. That was required because of fears that bollworms would develop resistance to Bt cotton.
Planting refuges was costly for producers. Gore was involved in research done in five Southeastern states that showed refuges were not necessary. For the second generation of Bt cotton, EPA dropped requirements for refuges.
“It is rewarding to make producers more profitable,” says Gore. “We want to solve problems to keep growers in business. Being in the community interacting with growers and consultants, we develop relationships. Things like that really drive our research program.”
One of his most significant research projects started 2004-2005 when tarnished plant bugs started getting really bad in cotton. Growers went from spraying four-five times a year to 10-15 times a year. Bugs developed resistance to the insecticides used at the time. Then, a new insect growth regulator (IGR) was developed that killed by disrupting the growth cycle. Growers were trying to use them like conventional insecticides.
Gore was involved in figuring out that the IGRs need to be put on preventatively.
“Previously we would scout the crop, count insects and spray when the insect population reached the point where the losses were equal to the cost of control,” says Gore. “With this IGR, we found out it needed to be sprayed a lot earlier than conventional insecticides. That research basically saved the cotton industry in the Mississippi Delta. It wasn’t like a silver bullet that completely eliminated tarnished plant bugs, but it made them manageable. Any grower will tell you that is what got us through until another new insecticide was registered with EPA. Now, we have a new Bt technology out specially for tarnished plant bugs and another new insecticide is going through the registration process at EPA.”
In 2007, he accepted a job as an assistant professor for Mississippi State University at DREC. In the years since then, he’s worked on pest management on cotton, soybeans, rice and peanuts.
Bubba Simmons, a former Delta Council President and ag producer in Washington County, says Gore has the ability and expertise to understand the technical details of ag research, but also how to communicate with farmers giving them findings they need to make the most of their crops.
“He has great rapport with growers,” says Simmons. “He is a really a good conduit to and advocate for the station at Stoneville and an advocate for agriculture in the Delta. He is very well respected with the growers and the pesticide industry, and has a great relationship with EPA.”
DREC Professor Tom Allen, Ph.D., says Gore is first and foremost an excellent communicator.
“Jeff has a great rapport with all of the entities in the agricultural community,” says Allen. “He can have a conversation on the turn row with a farmer or consultant, in the classroom with a graduate student or scientist, and in the meeting room with scientific colleagues as well as EPA regulators.”
DREC has about 5,000 acres of ag production with about 1,500 acres devoted to row crops. With twenty-six faculty, it is one of the largest ag research centers in the country.
The work is primarily replicated small plot research. Crops are exposed to different treatments which can range from pesticides, fertilizers, seeding rates, irrigation or pretty much anything the researchers can dream up. Researchers evaluate those treatments and compare the findings to an untreated control. The goal is to develop non-biased information growers can use to make informed decisions.
At the end of 2021 when he was first asked to consider being the interim head of DREC, he wasn’t sure about working in administration.
“I never thought I would want to do that, but I came to see it as an opportunity for growth and doing some different things,” says Gore. “I was allowed to still do my research and run the research station at the same time. I got satisfaction from doing that and being able to make some positive changes, such as mentoring young faculty. I started as permanent head in November 2022.”
His management style is completely hands off. He looks at being head of DREC as a service position.
“I’m there to serve our faculty and all of our employees,” he says. “I want to make sure they have everything to do their job effectively and efficiently. In government systems or nearly any job, there are going to be barriers. My job now is to knock down those barriers that impact efficiency. I have a complete open-door policy. Everyone who works here knows I’m there for them. They can call me, text me or walk into my office, and I’m going to make time for them. Without that, there is no way that I can be successful.”
When Delta ag producers are under great financial stress—as happened in the late 1980s and has been seen in the past three years—it affects DREC staff as well as growers. DREC relies heavily on external funding. A big part of the job is evaluation of different products from seed and chemical companies.
“When farmers are struggling like they have been the past couple years, it impacts the seed and chemical companies and the whole industry,” says Gore. “There is less money to evaluate products. Researchers end up having less money coming into their programs. We feel the pinch right along with the producers.”
A major benefit of his job is that everyone in the Delta knows how important ag is. They care about the ability of ag research to impact the profitability and productivity of growers, which has a positive impact on the entire Delta.
After living in Greenville for most of his tenure at Stoneville, Gore recently purchased a home on Lake Washington. Living along the water, he will fish when he wants to fish—which will be often.
“I’m looking forward to spending more time outdoors,” says Gore.