Bob Daugherty, man with a vision

Recently, the University of Nebraska received one of its largest gifts ever, when Robert B. Daugherty (Valmont) donated $50M to help the university develop solutions to various world challenges, including poverty, hunger, agriculture production, and water management. These are lofty goals to be sure. Yet Bob Daugherty is a man who has aimed high in the past, and has a proven record of achieving his goals.

Daugherty's father was a livestock buyer and Bob spent a good bit of his youth around the Omaha Stock Yards, in South Omaha. Though he never lived on a farm he got to know about farmers and their needs, and was drawn to agriculture generally.

After a stint in the Marine Corps, during World War II, Daugherty returned to Nebraska to 1946, looking for a business opportunity. That opportunity came when he met Sam McCleneghan, of Valley, Nebraska. Sam was manufacturing and selling a few items for farmers, some of which he had invented, including a small elevator for moving grain from the ground to grain bins. Bob arranged to buy half interest in Sam's tiny company for $5,000. Business was slow until they managed to snag a contract from Sears Roebuck, to sell their elevators through the Sears Catalog.

All seemed to be going well, and the Valley Manufacturing Co. grew from three to 100 employees. But, in 1952 there was a severe slowdown in the ag industry and business fell off drastically. Daugherty began to look for items that could diversify their business.

An employee told Bob about a new type of irrigation system that was being built in Columbus by Frank Zybach and his partner, Mr. Trowbridge. That system was a water-powered pivot sprinkler that could automatically irrigate up to a quarter section of land. Daugherty was immediately interested. A machine that could make it rain in Nebraska had to be good. After only a few days Daugherty had made a deal to buy Zybach's patent and manufacture the pivots, giving Zybach and Trowbridge royalties on machines sold.

Zybach's pivot irrigated differently, and getting it accepted by skeptical farmers did not come easily. However, the machine had a good bit going for it. It could irrigate land that was too hilly to irrigate by conventional pipe and ditch irrigation. And, once the machine was started it would move around the field automatically -- with no labor from the farmer. Note: This is the way it was supposed to work.

My Dad, Walter, in Plainview, was a fellow who was always interested in new ideas for his farm. He was not afraid to try new things -- he introduced Landrace hogs, and Brown Swiss cattle to the area. He was one of the first to do no-till farming on his place, which one friend called "a sand pile" -- not fit to be farmed. Sometimes his ideas worked, sometimes not. Sometimes he took considerable ridicule from his friends for his "wild ideas." Anyway, in 1955, after a couple of years of paying (often undependable) high school fellows to move irrigation pipe, Walter was ready for another method of irrigation. He was intrigued by the new pivot system that Daugherty was making at Valley. He visited the plant, talked with Daugherty, and ended up installing one of the first of the pivot systems in the Plainview area. (Daugherty was a very persuasive salesman, and Sam McCleneghan was so knowledgeable and sincere that I'm sure the sale was a foregone conclusion).

The first Valley machines, at $8,000, were quite complicated, and not very reliable. They had steel wheels that tended to leave deep ruts in their path through the field. The machines had a series of towers that had guy wires supporting the main pipe, which also kept the towers lined up. The machine was moved by hydraulic cylinders on each wheel, the water for power coming from the irrigation water. As long as everything was working as it should there was no problem. But -- if the hydraulic cylinders plugged up, if some of the guy wires on the towers lost their tension, if there was a problem at the well, then everything shut down -- to keep the machine from tearing itself up. It was a rare occasion that the Pivot would make a complete round without stopping. Farmers set their alarm clocks, to check their systems once or twice during the night.

In those early days, we got to know the Valley repair men quite well. There were so few systems that Sam and Woody(?) used to stop when they were in the area, to see how everything was working, whether we had called them or not. Also, Frank Zybach and Mr. Trowbridge would stop on their way to the Atkinson area, where they were buying land on which to put center pivots.

Through these contacts, Charlie, my Dad's tenant, learned the intricacies of the system and became very adept at fixing problems, and preventing them before they occurred. And, despite all the problems, the Pivot Irrigation System did increase yields quite dramatically!

In those early days, Bob Daugherty was a man in a hurry. He wanted things done immediately, and done right. I can only imagine the frustration he must have felt with the problems those early machines presented. But he never lost sight of the big picture. He believed that his product could increase yields, to feed more people, and help the farmer's bottom line -- and he was determined to become a major player in the ag industry.

Gradually, the Valley Pivots became better, more reliable, and more expensive. Rubber-tired wheels replaced the steel ones. Electric motors replaced the water-driven hydraulics, trusses along the main pipe replaced the towers and all those guy wires. Low sprinklers replaced the overhead sprayer heads, reducing evaporation on a windy day. Pivots became very reliable. It is now a rarity when a machine doesn't complete a round.

Every year, the pivot machines improved, and acceptance among the farmers grew. Yet agriculture continued to be a cyclical business and Daugherty continued to add products to diversify his business. One big addition was the making of steel and aluminum pipe, initially to be used in Valley Systems, but later to be sold in the making of light poles and other infrastructure development, leading to the company's world prominence in two markets -- irrigation equipment and pipe products. Over the years there have been many other products added, through mergers and acquisitions.

Under the leadership of Mogens Bay (a native of Denmark), CEO of Valmont since 1997, the company has made impressive growth, especially in the overseas market. Today Valmont (the name since 1969) is listed on the prestigious list of Forbes Top 400 Big Companies. It operates 18 plants in eight countries, in North and South America, Europe, and Asia (including a "state-of-the-art" Pivot Irrigation System plant in McCook). It markets products in more than 90 countries around the world. It is said that more than 10 million acres of Ag land receive water from Valmont irrigation systems. Valmont manufactures one half of all the pivot irrigation systems in the world. (The four largest manufacturers of pivot systems are all located in Nebraska.)

Daugherty's gift of $50 million is probably a drop in the bucket toward solving the problems of poverty, hunger, ag production and water management. Still, Daugherty started his company with a tiny $5,000 investment in 1946. Last year, Valmont did more than $1.8 billion in sales. When we consider that 65 percent of the world's dwindling supply of fresh water is used by agriculture, and estimates show that food production must double in the next 35 years, we can only pray that Bob Daugherty's latest investment is as successful as his first one was. I wouldn't bet against him.

Source: Valmont Industries history