I grew up in a little town in southeast Texas where the nearest cotton field was nearly two hours away. And yet I’ve worked in the cotton industry my entire career; how did that happen?!
When I graduated high school, I followed my brother’s footsteps and went to Sam Houston State University, destined to be a high school ag teacher like he was. During my sophomore year, I took a crop science and a botany class to “get them out of the way.” Two gifted professors who taught those courses made my life take a different direction.
One of those professors, Dr. Bobby Lane, took me under his wing, and upon graduation, I found myself on a recruiting trip to Texas A&M to explore three different graduate assistantships for a master’s degree in plant breeding. Two of those opportunities involved cotton, a crop I had only seen from the highway occasionally. I knew nothing about cotton. Enter Drs. Wayne Smith and Tom Cothren.
For the next six years, I learned about cotton plant breeding, physiology, entomology and pathology, and left there with a Ph.D. If you would have told me when I left that small town that I would have a Ph.D. and would be immersed in the world of cotton, I would’ve told you you’re crazy! But with the support of my parents, especially my father, who worked overtime at a Goodyear plant to pay for my 10 years of college, I had achieved what was thought to be impossible.
In two generations, we had gone from my grandparents without a high school diploma among the four of them (two of them could not read or write) to my having a Ph.D. If that’s not an example of the American dream, I don’t know what is!
While I was pursuing my graduate degrees, my wife worked as a secretary in the Soil & Crop Science department for some Extension specialists on campus. Another divine appointment put me in the path of folks like Drs. Willis Gass, Travis Miller, Don Dorsett, Bob Metzer, James Supak and other mentors from which I learned what Extension was all about.
Next thing I know, I’m applying for five Extension cotton specialist roles across the Belt, and we’re moving to Florence, South Carolina, to take the role of the state Extension cotton specialist for Clemson. Enter more mentors: Drs. Will McCarty, Paulus Shelby, Kater Hake, Johnny Crawford, Tom Burch, Randy Norton, J.C. Banks and others. I had read what these folks had written, but now I was amongst all these folks I looked up to.
Two years into that role, which I thought I would never leave, Sure-Grow Seed from Alabama offered me a role as director of technical service. They were entering into the world of transgenic cotton, as were Delta and Pine Land, and PayMaster at the time, and they were all forming their teams of agronomists to help support the advent of Bt cotton, and soon after Roundup Ready and all the other traits since. Next thing I know I’m working with Drs. Tom Kerby (who had already published every good idea I could come up with!) and Dave Albers.
Over the years, I have been able to be part of the introduction of several versions of Bt, Roundup Ready, Roundup Ready Flex, XtendFlex, Enlist, bacterial blight resistance and nematode resistance. I can’t even remember all the variety names over the years from Sure-Grow, Deltapine, PayMaster, Americot, NexGen and most recently, PhytoGen.
After working in industry for 27 years, I came full-circle and am back to Extension at Texas A&M AgriLife in Lubbock, sitting in the same seat once occupied by folks like Drs. James Supak, Kater Hake, Randy Boman, Mark Kelley, Seth Byrd and Murilo Maeda. Serving the biggest cotton patch in the world is not a position I take lightly, and I feel humbled to be part of that legacy.
So how did I manage to always seemingly be in the right place at the right time with the right people around all these years? Well, one might say I did a good job developing my network at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences, working with all the cotton specialists across the Belt in my various roles, or maintaining friendships with the right people.
I choose to believe it was all the Lord’s doing. Only God could’ve taken a small-town boy, with grandparents who couldn’t even read and write, to earn a Ph.D. and work among the best in the cotton industry.
— Ken Legé
Lubbock, Texas
ken.lege@ag.tamu.edu