Wyatt Recalls Fertilizer's Early Years
Published: Friday, February 27, 2026
Bob Wyatt made a name for himself in the retail fertilizer business, helping farmers increase corn yields with the help of fertilizers.
Now 95, Wyatt moves a little slower these days but still has a sharp memory about the early days of the fertilizer industry—as well as his time growing up on the farm, serving in the U.S. Army and earning his way through college.
A native of northeastern Missouri, Wyatt grew up on a small, diversified farm where he milked cows, fed hogs, husked corn by hand and ran his own custom baling service. With that humble beginning, he attended the University of Missouri, was drafted into the U.S. Army, and then returned to college to finish his education and earn a degree in agronomy.
Life after college was spent in Missouri, Illinois and eventually the Hoosier state. He and his wife, Mollie, were married for 62 years until her death in 2017. They had a son, Kevin, and a daughter, Alana.
In his role as a fertilizer salesman, Wyatt earned a reputation among farmers by showing them how to make soil more productive simply by adding fertilizer. In many cases, farmers could improve their yields by up to 20 bushels per acre by adding 100 pounds of fertilizer per acre.
"Illinois soils, mostly, and Indiana, both, were deficient in phosphate," he said. "Most of the silt-loam soils and the clay-loam soils in Illinois and Indiana were made up of dust blowing off the Rocky Mountains. It settled here."
Illinois soils, on average, are a little better. Wyatt said that's because Illinois is further west.
"The wind took the good dirt—the good soil particles—over Missouri and dropped them in Indiana and Illinois," he said. "That's called soil morphology."
During his career, Wyatt took marginal soils and made them prolific for crop production.
"I bought a poor farm in Illinois, and I took soil samples and we got 100 (bushels) the first year," he said. "I put on some broadcast fertilizer, and I put on quite a bit through the corn planter. It cost me a little bit in the way of fertilizer, but I got 100 bushel the first year."
Wyatt's early years were spent on a livestock and grain farm. He said his father knew how to treat animals.
"In the spring, we took care of the lambs, because the sheep were farrowing in March and April," he said. "With the hogs, the sows farrowed twice a year in the barn, and the cows had their calves hopefully in March and April, if you planned everything right with the bull. That controlled when you had calves."
The family had three milk cows.
"I helped feed the sheep and helped get them in their pens," he said. "My job was to milk those three cows."
He sat on a stool and milked each cow by hand. His father fed the hogs and the feeder calves.
"The cow herd usually took care of themselves," he said. "They spent the winter outside. On this farm, there was 420 acres, so we had 40 acres of oats and 40 acres of wheat to thresh with the threshing machine—when the threshing ring came around. It would make a big stack of straw, and the cows would stay out there. Dad fed them, if he had money and time, cottonseed cake."
Cottonseed cake produced good quality milk.
"That was before soybean meal back then," he said.
Corn harvest was a long, arduous process. He and his father would pick corn by hand and throw the husked ears into a horse-drawn wagon.
"Back then, if you were really lucky, you got done by Thanksgiving," he said. "We went to the field and picked a wagon load before Thanksgiving dinner and then went to the house and unloaded the corn and then went back out after Thanksgiving dinner and picked another load of corn by hand."
Back then, a half-acre would barely fill up the 26-bushel wagon, he said. Corn yielded less than 50 bushels per acre.
After graduating from high school, Wyatt attended a small teacher's college for a year, then transferred to the University of Missouri and discovered his passion for agriculture. He studied soil science and general agriculture and served as president of the Agronomy Club, but after his junior year the U.S. Army called.
In 1951, he reported to Hawaii for basic training. Ninety percent of the soldiers headed off to Korea, but Wyatt and a few others were selected to serve in the U.S. Signal Corps. He attended "radio school," as it was known, then was assigned to the U.S. Army's 44th Division at Fort Ord in California. His primary job was to lay radio wire between the headquarters and the forward observer during training exercises.
"My first 10 weeks with the 44th Division was mostly learning how to do wire communications and work on telephones," he said. "They taught us how to climb poles and hook up the wire to the telephone."
He also traveled to the Black Forest region of Germany, laying communication lines at a military base there.
Once he was discharged from the Army in 1953, Wyatt came back to Missouri and resumed his education. He purchased a new car using "separation" money, which was awarded to servicemembers to ease their transition to civilian life. That same year, he drove to Dallas, Texas to attend the American Society of Agronomy meeting.
He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1954. He and Mollie married that June.
Wyatt's first job was as a fertilizer salesman for the Boonville Mill and Grain Co. in Boonville, Mo. He earned $275 a month.
At that time, most fertilizer products were sold in 50- or 100-pound bags. But Wyatt and his boss pioneered a different method. First, they converted an old grain elevator into a fertilizer plant.
"They put the fertilizer materials in the grain bins inside the elevator," he said. "When they needed potash, they let gravity bring it out of the bin into the elevator."
They mixed phosphate and potash and emptied them into a truck that would apply the material directly onto the fields. The farmer didn't have any bags to mess with. This was the beginning of bulk blending.
"It became the norm," he said, adding that up to 90% of fertilizer sold today is applied in this manner.
"When my dad starting using fertilizer in '35 or '36, he bought them in 100-pound bags and had an attachment on the corn planter," he said. "He planted four or five acres and had to stop and fill up the boxes."
In the 1950s and '60s, many farmers installed augers on their grain wagons which they used to dump bulk fertilizer into the planter. Wyatt sold auger kits in addition to the fertilizers.
At the Boonville fertilizer facility, Wyatt's job was to take soil samples and mix fertilizers according to what the soil tests suggested. That experience foreshadowed what he would do throughout the rest of his career: study the soil and add fertilizer in exact amounts.
In his role as a salesman, Wyatt convinced many farmers to make the switch to bulk-blended fertilizers. After experimenting with that once, they usually adopted it as their standard practice.
In 1956, the Boonville facility was sold and Wyatt and his family relocated to Paxton, Ill., where he worked as a salesman for Schofield Soil Service. He worked there for 12 years before the company was sold to Custom Farm Service.
Wyatt and his family then moved to Winamac, where he landed a position as an agronomist with CFS. A few years later, he became general manager, overseeing 27 plants in northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan. In that role, he learned the importance of service.
"Anybody can sell, but very few people can service," he said. "That's what you need to do to sell fertilizer. You need to sell, but you also need to get the material to them when they want it."
As for selling fertilizer, that also required him to read his customers.
"That's what you do in selling," he said. "If you see he's not going to buy the whole boat, you figure out the canoe and sell him the canoe program and go from there."
Wyatt also purchased a 200-acre farm near Winamac and added value to it by increasing the productivity of the soils. At that farm, he doubled the corn yield in just two years.
Farm productivity also increased as farmers bought more powerful tractors that could plow deeper into the soil, allowing the corn roots to go deeper.
"I wasn't in the implement business, but I sold chisel plows," he said referring to the advice he gave growers. "A farmer could take his M Farmall and go out with a 7- or 8-foot chisel plow and put it 10 inches in the ground and rip up that compaction program. The next year, he could get a 10- or 15-bushel increase in corn simply because he was farming twice as much soil."
Wyatt was elected the president of the Indiana Plant Food Assn. in the mid-1970s. In that role, he and other leaders recognized the need for a standard of agronomic proficiency to validate the fertilizer profession. That effort resulted in a continuing education program that awards certification to those who graduate from the program.
In 2023, Wyatt was recognized with the Indiana CCA (certified crop advisor) Legacy Award.
Wyatt retired roughly 20 years ago but continued to work as a consultant for many years. His imprint on the fertilizer industry continues, as son Kevin took over as manager of the Winamac CFS (Crop Fertilizer Specialists) plant upon his father's retirement. He has also retired.
Wyatt will turn 96 in April. He has four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
When asked to share the key to his longevity, Wyatt credits his wife.
"I had a good wife who fed me well," he said. "She was a good cook and looked after me."
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