The pace of life in the Delta tends to chug along at the same pace a tractor might. The ability to keep up with planting and harvesting seasons influences more than just the economic prosperity of the families; what is planted in the fields is harvested in the community. Nobody knows this better than the people who help keep the planters’ wheels spinning.
Keith Simmons has worked 25 years with Wade Inc., a Greenwood staple since 1909 that also serves central and north Mississippi. Wade partners with John Deere to sell and repair farm machinery. Simmons started with the company as a college student with Northwest Delta Community College. Now he’s been working and raising kids almost as long as some of the employees at the Greenwood Wade location have been alive.
Simmons, 44, didn’t know he would be working on farm machinery when he graduated high school. “Growing up in the Delta around farms and stuff, I had always been interested in agriculture,” he said, but he had no interest in the mechanical aspects of farming during those years. That changed when the Itta Bena native took a gap year and then enrolled at Northwest Mississippi Community College in the school’s John Deere agricultural technology program.
“When I started the program and realized the opportunity it provided to have a job right out of school — the implications of being able to have not just a job but a career — it made sense to me,” he said.
He worked 13 years in the technician shop before moving into a managerial position. He described his time in the shop as challenging but rewarding.
“When these machines are out running, at times it’s extremely hot outside,” he said. “The challenge is in trying to get the machine back going as quickly as we can to keep our farmers running and managing the complexity of how the machines have changed over the years. But, it’s rewarding — you know — in that you’re the guy out there basically saving the day for the farmer whose equipment is down.”
Planting and harvest season also pose different challenges, mainly because of the different types of equipment that are being used, Simmons said.
“When you’re talking about planting season, you’re mainly dealing with tractors and planters, so you have to be focused on ... making sure your tractor and planter are in top condition. That’s where everything starts. If you do not get the correct seed in the ground with the correct spacing, there’s so many variables involved in making sure you get a good stand on your crop, because it all starts there. If you don’t get a good stand on your crop, you’re going to pay for it on yield,” he explained.
The challenges in the fall also relate to getting the best yield on the crop that’s planted, but the challenges look different.
“When it comes harvest season in the fall you’re dealing with specialty machines with engineering designed for harvesting. They’re completely different types of machines, so it’s just completely different challenges for both of them ... You’re dealing with combines and cotton pickers which are designed to harvest crops from the field, so if those machines are not running properly or set properly you can lose a lot of crop. And, of course, when you lose crop on the ground, crop equals money, so we have to be ready to get the machines optimized for peak performance,” Simmons continued.
In both seasons, farmers and technicians have to be cognizant of the Mississippi heat. “You’re talking about the middle of a cornfield when the heat index is 115 in the area — you have to be real cautious about heat exhaustion and heat strokes when you’re in the field like that. It doesn’t affect the machinery as much as it affects the person trying to repair it. The machines are already hot from running, then it’s hot outside. It’s physically demanding,” Simmons said.
Other challenges to technicians come from the more corporate side of the job. Like many other companies, Wade Inc. is affected by supply chain issues resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Simmons said for the most part the company tries to be proactive and stay ahead of ordering the supplies they know they know they’ll need in the future, but it’s still sometimes hit or miss getting supplies.
“You just really never know. One thing we need today may be unavailable, then next week it may be available and something completely different that’s unavailable.”
Out of all the challenges that farmers and technicians face, though, some things have been made easier over the years. Technological advances have revolutionized the way farm machinery operates as well as the way technicians service machines.
“Technology, especially in agriculture, is a fastly changing environment. You know, you’ve got tractors — when I first started doing this, there was no such thing as satellite-guided steering. ... Technology is the trend and the future of agriculture. A technician will do as much work with a laptop or IPad, or even a smartphone, as he will with a wrench,” Simmons said.
One of the particularly useful technological innovations for technicians is the electronic relay of information from a piece of equipment back to the shop.
“Typically what it looks like is that we have a customer call in and say something like, for example, ‘Hey, my combine is setting a trouble code,’ and he gives us that code. Fortunately, we work with a brand that has the technology where we can sit in this office and connect to that machine remotely and pull diagnostic information from that machine all while never even seeing the machine. We can have a good idea of what we may possibly need before we ever leave here,” Simmons explained.
He said the technology allows those working on the machinery to go in for a one-pass fix. Instead of heading out from the shop to the field, diagnosing the problem on the machine, then having to go back to the shop to get the appropriate tools just to have to return to the field and fix the machine, technicians are often able to repair machines in one stop and get the farmer back in the field more efficiently.
However, even with all of the technology present in farm equipment now, technicians are still a necessary part of the process. “There’s nothing, really, that can be done by a machine, except maybe some on a cotton picker,” Simmons said. The supply of technicians does not meet the demand, though, which is why Simmons said he was glad Wade Inc. began an internship program with Northwest Delta Community College. “One of the biggest issues is keeping service technicians. It’s not something you want to see. I would almost compare it to the nursing shortage of a few years ago,” Simmons said.
Technicians work on a 7 a.m. - 5 p.m. schedule, but additional hours will be added during the summertime, when technicians are also in the shop from 7 a.m.-noon on Saturdays. However, farming does not always run on set hours, especially when it comes to working on machinery. “There are times we may be here at 6 o’clock in the morning and may not leave till 10 o’clock at night — so while we have set hours, we do not always go by those because we’re doing everything we can to get our customers up and running,” Simmons said.
Jeremey Woods, a 27-year old Grenada native who live in Tippo and works as a service technician in the shop, said the hours are one of the challenges of the job. “Especially during the busy times, especially now that I’ve got a kid at home,” he added. Woods is the father of one, a 4-year-old boy named Jayce.
Woods said it was his father-in-law who introduced him to the job with Wade Inc. “I never thought, when I was a kid, that I’d be working in agriculture,” he said. “I worked on farms when I was older, but it wasn’t until I was married and with my father-in-law around the farm all the time and seeing how much down time and all that matters, then he got me into this down here” he said. Simmons had worked with Woods’ father-in-law previously, which served as Woods’ in with the ag tech program at Wade Inc.
Woods started with the company around seven years ago as an ag-tech student, before Wade instituted a supplemental agricultural technology mentorship program. The program, which started two years ago, allows the ag-tech students to work in the shop, under the supervision of an experienced service technician, when they’re not in school.
“Our corporate team put the mentorship program in place. We thought we needed to do a better job of making sure that we were giving these people the tools they need to succeed in the future. We felt like it was kind of beneficial on their part and our part to keep them in a mentorship role for a little while until they really get their grasp on things,” Simmons explained.
Currently, two members of the community college are interning with Wade Inc. through the agricultural technology program. “I guess one of the challenges you could say,” Simmons chuckled, “is that I’ve been married and raising kids almost as long as some of these young technicians have been alive.”
Some of the technology the technicians work on is even older. “We’ve worked on tractors 40, 50, 60 years old,” Simmons said. The age of machinery presents unique difficulties depending on the service technician.
“It’s funny, you can get one of our older generation technicians and give them something new with technology, and it’s kind of overwhelming. And then if you give one of our younger generation techs a piece of older equipment, that, for them, is kind of overwhelming,” Simmons said.
“People would be surprised how much tecnology we deal with. It’s the fastest growing trend in agriculture,” Simmons said. “We’re no longer thinking how much bigger can we make machines but how much technology can we add to optimize these machines.”
Technological advances can also add to the experience of servicing the machinery. Woods most enjoys working on cotton pickers because of the complexity of the machinery. “There’s 30-40 computers on cotton pickers, and each one communicates with each other,” he explained. The electrical work on cotton pickers is intricate because of the amount of wires and controllers connected to each computer.
The computers monitor and control outputs on voltages. “Say if you turn a switch on, the controller sees that you turned that switch and it powers that light or whatever you’re switching on. Then there’s a pile of stuff controllers do,” Woods explained. “They save data and stuff, like on a cotton picker with the bales that come through, the machine knows what number that bale is and how much it weighed, everything.”
Simmons, during his time as a mechanic, always preferred to work on combines. He liked to fix them, then see the satisfaction of the cleaned rows behind the machine when it was operating again. Woods said his preference for cotton pickers was due to the complexity of the machinery but also due to others’ dislike for the machine. “It’s very nasty and repetitive work, and a lot of confined spaces,” he explained.
Each time new equipment or technology comes out, technicians go through extensive training provided by both Wade Inc. and the John Deere company. Currently, Woods is one of 10 service technicians employed by Wade Inc.
“Without the work I do, if a machine is down out there and a customer can’t get his crop out, it affects the whole of that family, and it affects everybody else who would consume that product,” Woods said.
Simmons said the biggest reason he stays in farming is because of the interconnectedness of the health of a farm with the health of the community it inhabits.
“What matters to me personally is keeping our customers taken care of and keeping my employees happy. The way I look at it, farming is a way of life, and we as a company and department have the ability to influence the quality of life of our customers, good or bad, depending on the performance that we give. We’re just dedicated to making sure we give the best that we can give to make sure we improve the quality of their life and work as much as we can.
“I think farming, especially in our area, is one of the biggest industries we have. Farming is responsible for supporting many things around our community, so I feel like the more we support our farming industry, the better it helps our entire community,” he said.
Contact Katherine Parker at 662-581-7239 or kparker@gwcommonwealth.com.
