Archie Manning is without question the most famous person ever born in Drew, Miss. But when it comes to the world of ag consultants, few are known as well or held in more high regard than Drew’s Herbert “Tucker” Miller III.

Miller’s father, Buddy Tuck, farmed the rich Mississippi Delta soils for 50 crop years, so Tucker gets his love and passion for agriculture honestly. Buddy Tuck sent his son to scouting school in Batesville, Miss., when Tucker was 15 years old. The 2015 Mississippi Agricultural Consultant's Association Hall of Fame inductee will celebrate his 65^th birthday this September, marking his 50^th crop season of plying his entomological prowess.

“Dad told me and my buddy Allen “Butch” Cummins, to get our butts over to Batesville, Miss., pay attention, and learn everything we could about scouting cotton,” says Miller, with a remembering laugh, as he pulls his visor back over his head. “The next summer I started checking cotton fields around the outskirts of Drew for Mr. Bill Young on Brooks Farms.”

Doug Simms put Miller under his mentoring wing those first years, but Miller also gives mentoring-credit to Jack Oakman from Clarksdale, Bill Harris from Greenwood, and Clyde Sartor from Clinton, Mississippi. “Those guys were the real pioneers of what became the Mississippi Ag Consultants Association,” says Miller. “Doug consulted for growers Bill Pearson and Frank Mitchener, who farmed big acreage in Tallahatchie County.”

The Past and The Present

Boll weevils and bollworms were the pests of the day back then. “We had plant bugs, but we didn’t understand their significance or full impact on the crop,” adds Miller. “We started figuring all that out in the ’70s.”

Bollworms were rampant in those pre-Bollgard days, and farmers had been applying toxaphene and methyl parathion for control. When pyrethroids were commercialized, products like Ambush, Pounce and Pidrin hit the market. “They provided good control…for a while,” recalls Miller.

By the late ’70s and early ’80s, plant bug infestations were getting worse and the effectiveness of pyrethroids for control was waning, and by the ’90s, they became less effective controlling worms as well.

By 1975, Miller had earned his undergraduate degree in agronomy and his master’s in pest management from Mississippi State University. “Mississippi State University required cross-discipline credits in plant pathology, entomology, and weed science to earn a master’s in pest management,” says Miller.

“The amount of acreage I was working was relatively small back then, but my business was growing steadily. I thought I could make a living consulting, so I hung out my shingle as president of Miller Entomological Service, Inc., in 1977.”

Today, Miller has two others working for him and oversees nearly 30,000 acres with two trucks and a drone. He remembers those who took him under their wing when he was just starting out, and today he is turning the page and doing the same thing. One of those up-and-coming consultants working for Miller is Joel Moor of Indianola, Miss. With an undergraduate degree from Mississippi State in business and a master’s in entomology, Moor is working for Miller this year but will probably hang out his own shingle before long — just as Miller did decades ago.

From an entomological standpoint, 2018 has been almost ordinary around the Delta. Plant bugs and aphid levels were normal. Since thrips started exhibiting resistance to thiamethoxam, Miller got control with imidacloprid over-treated with acephate for an extra punch.

“Pests come in waves with thrips usually first, possibly some spider mites, then plant bugs,” says Miller. “We normally get two flights of aphids and bollworms, but the biggest problem we’ve had the last two years is the lack of control we’re seeing from Bollgard II.”

Once a threshold was reached this year, Miller had to counter with expensive products in the diamide class — products that really escalated his farmer client’s insecticide budgets. “Growers just don’t understand why they have to pay technology fees and then spray for worms,” says Miller. “I have to remind them that technology was designed for the tobacco budworm.”

Busy and Confounding

The last two years were Miller’s busiest to date. Moor was in graduate school, and Miller was doing everything with inexperienced help. “It was also my most confounding year because we were hit with pyrethroids not providing bollworm control and heavy August rains from Hurricane Harvey caused boll shed and rotten cotton,” says Miller. “We had target spot and bacterial blight — two things that hadn’t given us big problems in a long time.”

Pigweed seems to be resistant to anything but dicamba and 2-4D, and drift issues abound. Hooded sprayers are becoming the norm across the flat fertile fields of the Mississippi Delta, and with tight budgets, some of Miller’s clients might think about second guessing his advice. However, he is nothing but honest with every one of them.

Timing is key when you’re trying to control pests. “If you don’t pull that trigger in a designated window of time, you’re only hurting your crop and potentially your bottom line at the end of the season,” says Miller.

Miller believes Mother Nature has somehow educated today’s bollworms. Instead of laying their eggs in the terminal, they have started laying them in dried bloom tags. “There’s no viable protein or toxin in that dying tag. When worms hatch, they will move on to a boll down into the canopy of the plant,” says Miller. “When that happens, I don’t care how good your insecticide is, you just can’t get the coverage you need.”

Who is Tucker Miller?

When asked what qualities or characteristics make up Tucker Miller, his responses were honest and immediate. “I have a good work ethic, I’ve never been late to anything in my life, and I have never lied to anyone,” says Miller.

While working for Mississippi cotton producer Clifton Bishop years ago, they were going over field maps to set up a defoliation program when Bishop asked about a specific small 20-acre field. “I told him, I’m not going to lie to you Mr. Bishop, I didn’t even know that field was there. I haven’t been in it all year,” remembers Miller, with sort of an embarrassing laugh.

A lot of water has passed under the Blue Lake bridge on the outskirts of Drew since Tucker Miller attended that cotton scouting school in Batesville, Miss. Miller loves consulting and his clients have learned to trust his recommendations no matter the perceived economic costs. “I learned a long time ago, you can’t let a nickel stop a dollar,” concludes Miller.