SCOTTS BLUFF COUNTY, Neb. – Andy Groskopf wants to bring some western Nebraska sensibilities to the way corn is grown across the state.

Andy, who farms with his father and uncle north of Scottsbluff, was recently appointed as one of two new directors for the Nebraska Corn Board by Gov. Pete Ricketts. He’s the first Scotts Bluff County producer ever appointed to the board, and lives farther west than any previous District 8 director, he said.

“My district is huge,” Andy said. “It’s almost half the state.”

With that much territory, Andy hopes to close what the gap between producers in the western counties of Nebraska and policy makers in the east. For a long time, he said, there’s been what many in western Nebraska see as a sense of separation between the two made up of more than just distance.

“There’s a disconnect from the west to the east,” Andy said. “There’s a lack of communication. Everything in Nebraska seems like it’s for the eastern part of the state, in organizations that have to do with agriculture.”

Some of that separation is real, he said. There are differences in how crops are grown in different areas of the state. Eastern producers use irrigation, if at all, as a supplement to grow their crops, for example. But, the further west one goes, the more irrigation becomes a matter of success versus crop failure.

“We work a lot harder growing a crop out here,” Andy said. “There are several different facets to production nobody else has in the state.

“There are a lot of different practices here compared to the eastern part of Nebraska,” he said. “I’ll give the Corn Board a whole different perspective to look at.”

Andy is a fourth-generation farmer – in the United States. His family can trace its roots in agriculture to the Volga River region in Russia.

He currently raises corn and dry edible beans, working with his father, Vern, and uncle, Larry. Andy handles the farming duties while Vern and Larry run Groskopf Manufacturing, a local surface irrigation supply business. 

“I do all the stuff on the farm rather than be involved in the irrigation business,” Andy said. 

A graduate of Scottsbluff High School, Andy attended Western Nebraska Community College, where he studied auto mechanics. He’d gotten a job as a mechanics helper with the local Case implement dealership as a mechanics helper as part of an FFA class in high school and enjoyed the work.

It was actually at his father Vern’s urging that he went to school at all, he said. Vern didn’t want Andy to follow in his footsteps on the farm, actively trying to discourage him, telling him he needed “to go to school and do something,” Andy said.

But that first job off the farm “made me realize it’s better at home,” he said. “It was an experience.”

He left WNCC when he was offered a job in an auto body shop, where he worked for about four years. He then got a job at a feedlot before finally renting his first farm in 2007.

“It took off from there,” he said. “I decided working in the agriculture field is kind of my thing. 

“I still like the mechanic stuff,” Andy said. “When I’m not running a piece of machinery, I’m fixing stuff around the farm.”

Andy is married to Jessica Groskopf, an Extension Education and Agriculture Economist at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff. Andy said she’s one of the best resources he could have as he begins his three-year term on the Nebraska Corn Board.

The Nebraska Corn Board works hand-in-hand with the Nebraska Corn Growers. The difference is the Corn Board is focused almost exclusively on administering Corn Check-Off dollars, funding education, marketing efforts, research and more.

Working with the Corn Board’s Research Committee, Andy will be one voice in how check-off dollars are disbursed to researchers into corn genetics, disease and pest resistance and more, all focused on growing better, more-profitable corn. It’s also going to be a great learning experience, Andy said.

“After this, I’ll have a whole new outlook on corn, seeing all the different places it goes to market, how they do it in different states and different countries,” he said. “I hope to learn more about where the corn actually goes.”

And, even though he’s only attended one meeting of the board since his appointment, Andy said he’s already learning things. The biggest surprise he had was learning how little corn is being promoted, he said.

“That was the first shocker to me,” Andy said. “A simple thing like that could really raise the price” producers receive for their product.