In 2005, Matt Griggs was 25 and had no plans to take the lead role at Griggs Farms LLC. Then his father, Bobby, died unexpectedly, just a month after planting season wrapped up. Almost overnight, Griggs became the fifth-generation at the helm of the Crockett County, Tenn., farm his family has worked continuously since 1882.
Griggs recalls the farm started out as a cotton gin, primarily, eventually giving way to conventionally grown row crops when his dad took the reins.
Today, the family grows cotton, corn, soybeans and winter wheat, along with a few acres of recently added canola. Griggs notes that the real transformation hasn’t been in what the farm produces but, rather, in how he manages risk.
Two Crises Forced Change
Early in Griggs’ tenure, two events exposed critical vulnerabilities on the farm that he says almost sunk it.
First came the 2007 drought: 45 days without rain and temperatures exceeding 100°F cost the family roughly $100,000.
“That almost put us out of business, right there,” he says.
Second, glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth arrived on the farm and dug in. “I saw that that was a weed that had the potential of putting us out of business if we did not find ways to control it,” he recalls.
But tillage wasn’t an option. More than a century of intensive cultivation, particularly for cotton, had left many of the family’s fields with just 3 to 4 inches of topsoil.
That realization set Griggs on a path toward using a variety of “regenerative ag” practices: cover crops, no-till, high-biomass systems and equipment modifications. He says the adoption and continued use of them are driven by one primary objective: to reduce financial exposure.
The Business Case for Soil Health
Griggs frames his approach simply. “To me personally, regenerative ag means doing more with less,” he says.
Consequently, his operation has substantially reduced its synthetic fertilizer use, relying heavily on chicken litter for fertility. Herbicide use has been cut roughly in half.
“We’re trying to maintain our level of production while using fewer synthetic inputs that we have to purchase, not only to increase our profitability, but especially to lower our risk,” Griggs says.
He believes that perspective offers a useful framework for other farmers considering soil-health practices: Don’t start by asking what practice to adopt, he advises. Start by identifying what risk is costing you the most money.
For Griggs, the answers were — and continue to be — drought, soil loss and herbicide resistance. His management system has evolved accordingly.
Starting Small, Learning Fast
Griggs didn’t jump into cover with both feet. He started small, planting radishes to just 7 acres – a good thing as his first attempt with them failed.
“They came up, but they didn’t do anything. It was way too late in the season [and the biomass was disappointing],” he told Oklahoma State University’s Brian Arnall, during a recent episode of The Crop Science Podcast Show.
Year two was different. Earlier planting following corn — with residual nitrogen still available — produced massive radishes.
That success led to more experimentation with cereal rye and crimson clover. By 2014, Briggs says he had cover crops on 300 acres and thought he had them “all figured out.”
The following year, every acre not in winter wheat got a cover crop. Griggs also decided to plant cash crops directly into living covers.
That’s when theory met hard reality.
When Equipment Becomes the Limiting Factor
While corn and soybeans went into the ground relatively well, cotton planting was a disaster.
“I made it 20 feet into the field, and everything locked up solid on my planter — the covers wrapped around my row cleaners, shafts, meters, everything,” he says. “It was a nightmare.”
In five days, he was able to plant only about 200 acres.
Instead of concluding using cover crops didn’t work, Griggs changed his system.
A previous visit to the late Dave Brandt — a regenerative farming pioneer, based in Ohio — had introduced him to the idea of using roller crimpers in covers. Griggs called Brandt to if he had one for sale. Brandt did. Griggs hooked up a trailer and drove through the night to buy it, sight unseen. By 7 a.m. the next morning, Griggs was back home in Tennessee and had the roller crimper in his fields working.
“It wasn’t perfect, but I was able to get seed in the ground without wrapping everything up,” Griggs recalls and laughs.
Custom Solutions for Heavy Residue
Since then, Griggs has continued to tweak his system and equipment to handle extreme residue.
Griggs began the process by modifying his planter to handle heavy residue. He took old planter seed opener discs, cut them to size with a plasma torch and bolted them to the back of row cleaners, creating a solid, heavy cleaner that could part residue effectively.
He also modified an old, hooded sprayer “that was covered by weeds,” to spray an 8-inch band of herbicide between the hoods, using RTK guidance to follow the same lines he’d later use for planting.
“We basically had the ease of planting no-till, but all the benefits of high biomass cover crops because we could just drop right in there using the same guidance lines and plant our seed in that 8-inch wide strip where there wasn’t very much residue,” he says.
Today, with newer machinery in his equipment fleet, Griggs says he can plant into just about any cover crop in a wide range of conditions. Planting cotton a half-inch deep through 33,000 pounds of wet biomass per acre is still difficult — but it works well, he notes, and is worth the effort to achieve weed control and cropping ROI.
Educating Beyond the Farm Gate
Griggs has built a large following on YouTube and social media, documenting his farming practices and explaining various management decisions.
As urban development from nearby Jackson, Tenn., has pushed closer to his operation —some of his acreage is within city limits — he’s faced conflicts over agricultural practices, including chicken litter use.
Social media gives him a way to explain those practices directly.
“I’m not trying to influence anybody,” he says. “I’m trying to educate.”
Griggs routinely shows what the farm is doing, explains why and gives people the information to make their own judgments.
“All I’m doing is I’m showing what we’re doing and explaining why we’re doing it, the thought process, the methodology behind it, trying to give people the facts,” he says.
He’s also learned when not to engage, particularly when people approach farming issues emotionally. His philosophy: Stay inside your area of expertise.
“I’m only going to talk about the things that I know about, and I’ll vigorously defend those things that I know about, and I know that I have the facts behind me,” he says.
For More Information...
You can learn more about the Griggs’ operation at www.griggsfarmsllc.com or on Facebook Griggs Farms LLC.
On their website, you’ll find a host of materials they encourage other farmers to download and use — free of charge. Here are links to three of the tools offered:
Farm Expense Record Keeping and Landlord Expense Calculator
