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Playing in the dirt is profitable enterprise for Kearney laboratory
by Jennifer Chick

For Ray Ward, a day at the office is a day spent playing in the dirt.

Ward, 73, is the owner of Ward Laboratories, a high-tech soil, water and feed testing business based in Kearney. The company started in 1983 when Ward moved to Kearney after many years in Oklahoma and Kansas, where he provided soil testing services for other companies.

“I went to work at Servi-Tech and learned how to run a business,” Ward said. “When we started our lab in Kearney, I knew I didn’t want to do crop consulting because I wanted the crop consultants as customers. So I developed the philosophy that I am going to do the laboratory testing while I do the education for people to understand what we’re trying to do on the testing.”

An employee and a half

Ward and his wife, Jolene, are Nebraska natives so the decision to move back to Nebraska was an easy one. They started the company by cashing in their savings and retirement to set up business in a three-bay garage in a Kearney industrial park. Besides the couple, there was one more full-time employee and one part-time employee.

“I had enough money in late October of 1984 to pay one-and-a-half persons one more pay period and then I was done,” Ward said. “But we started getting soil samples in and they paid cash so we survived that and kept growing.”

From those humble beginnings, Ward Labs has now grown to 24 permanent employees. Last fall, during Ward Labs’ peak season, 45 employees were helping run samples through the high-tech machines, extracting valuable data that fertilizer companies and producers can use to improve crop production. In 1984, the company ran 14,000 samples. In 2010, they ran 277,000 samples.

A seasonal business

“We’ll run more soil samples in a day in November than we will the whole month of May and probably the whole month of June,” he said. “Our company is kind of like a farmer, we’ve got a harvest season and it’s kind of like when they harvest corn and beans, that’s when their income comes in, so it’s cyclical like agriculture.”

Ward Labs has even run samples for producers in the Ukraine. And brewers in Australia rely on the lab’s water analyses.

Ward said his company trains all of their employees, but most of the technicians are college educated with BS degrees in biology. Technology drives Ward Labs’ end results, from the pH and organic matter robots that test soil components to the software that delivers those results to customers through email files or by the company’s website. Technology allows for fast results since data can be posted online as soon as it is entered, allowing for quick turnaround even for international customers.

A promising future

Grid sampling, which allows producers to fine-tune nutrient application for optimum results across an entire field, has created a boom in business at Ward Labs. This boom has allowed Ward Labs to imagine an exciting future. Laboratories across the world, from South Africa to Delaware, are asking that Ward Labs’ software be installed at their locations. Because of the interest, Ward Labs is considering the start of a new company which will focus exclusively on marketing its software to other labs.

“These are the things you think about,” Ward said. “Technology in communication changes so fast.”

Another interesting option comes from the popularity of no-till farming, where producers leave crop residue in the field after harvest to retain moisture. Ward speaks at many no-till workshops about the importance of linking biological testing to advancements in no-till farming. One particular area of interest is analyzing how to use biological testing to measure microbes on plants.

“There’s a whole bunch of things in the soil that we have ignored,” Ward said.

Among other things, biological testing allows Ward Labs to measure fatty acids in the soil, which can help determine which organisms are present in each field

“The idea is the more diversity we have in the microbes, the more nitrogen they are going to fix in the soil so farmers will have to use is less per nitrogen bushel,” Ward said. “Then maybe these microbes will make sure all the other nutrients are more available for the plants, and we need this microbial activity to really enhance the yields.”

Ward’s grandson, Nick Ward, is currently working on his doctoral degree in soil fertility and hopes to one day take over the business. Ward Labs continues to move ahead, excited about the future prospects of analyzing the soils of the Great Plains to help producers reach their highest yields yet.

Who To Contact...

Ward Laboratories
4007 Cherry Ave.,
Kearney, NE 68848-0788
Telephone: 800-887-7645
www.wardlabs.com

Jennifer Chick is a freelance writer living in Holdrege, Nebraska. In addition to work for a wide variety of clients, she is a regional correspondent for the Kearney Hub. You can write to her at tjchick@q.com.

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