{"id":982,"date":"2019-11-19T23:20:58","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T23:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/?p=982"},"modified":"2020-06-03T16:37:29","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T16:37:29","slug":"one-mans-trash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/one-mans-trash\/","title":{"rendered":"One man’s trash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Luke<\/a>By Katy Nesbitt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luke Dynes, \u201902, is the poster child for the self-made business executive \u2014 but his work goes beyond his success in agriculture.<\/p>\n

Dynes moved to Eastern Oregon as a teenager from Danville, Illinois. He attended Hermiston High School and spent summers in Elgin. Motivated to get an education and gifted with a strong work ethic, Dynes attended Oregon State University\u2019s agricultural science program at EOU\u2019s La Grande campus<\/a> and graduated with an Agriculture Resource Economics degree. He was in business for himself shortly after graduation, harvesting crop byproducts in the Columbia River Basin under the name Pacific Ag.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would go in and buy, bale and market byproducts off the farm,\u201d Dynes said.<\/p>\n

Grass seed is a big commodity in northeastern Oregon, but after it\u2019s cut, straw remains. Pacific Ag harvested and marketed straw, as well as residual stalks from peas or beans, and baled them for dairy herd feed.<\/p>\n

After almost 10 years Dynes sold Pacific Ag and started Wyatt Enterprises<\/a>, a company that repurposes byproducts from processing plants such as sweet corn silage, off-grade peas, onions, carrots, potatoes and blueberries and the residual plant matter from wine grape production.<\/p>\n

After his mother passed away, Dynes took on the added challenge of helping raise five of his 13 siblings. Those siblings he didn\u2019t help raise have since become felons, which he said created the soft place in his heart for the inmates on work release he hires.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do hire a lot of people out of work release,\u201d Dynes said. \u201cThey are not necessarily bad people at heart. Sometimes they just need direction and guidance to become very productive contributors to society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes staying on the straight and narrow doesn\u2019t work out, Dynes admitted, but in 20 years he said he has witnessed three success stories of employees who completely turned their lives around.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my way of giving back for the help I got when I was in need,\u201d Dynes said.<\/p>\n

Most of what Wyatt Enterprises collects from the processors is made into feed ingredients for dairy and beef cattle, chickens and dogs.<\/p>\n

Dynes said, \u201cSome of the byproduct we deliver directly to customers, the rest we take to our dehydrating facilities and manage it in a dry form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Pacific Ag and Wyatt Enterprises, crop waste went straight to a feedlot, compost yard or the dump when handling when it became a problem for a farmer. Dynes said there was a real need to start a business in managing the material.<\/p>\n

\u201cPiece by piece we structured our business model and it created an industry,\u201d Dynes said.<\/p>\n

As food processing increased in the Columbia Basin, it pushed all of the agriculture services like his to step up and become better.<\/p>\n

Dynes said, \u201cWe are just one piece of the puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n

His goal in building up these companies was to reduce the number of tons of fruits and vegetables taken to the landfill \u2014 without any cost to the suppliers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think recycling in all aspects is more successful if it doesn\u2019t cost the person producing the material to recycle,\u201d Dynes said. \u201cI believe that we can develop beneficial secondary uses for all of these agricultural products one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n

“You can make a difference \u2014 and it\u2019s the littlest things that make the biggest difference.\u201d<\/div>\n

Dynes said he believes all private business benefit from recycling and reducing waste, which is easily demonstrated in agriculture. He said cows, for instance, recycle large volumes of crop byproduct, leaving behind manure that can fertilize crops, all while producing food for humans and pets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally believe the most viable businesses that help reduce the footprint are the dairies and feeders that are using by-products instead of contemporary purpose-grown crops,\u201d Dynes said.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been involved in agriculture from a very young age, and attended his first year at Blue Mountain Community College<\/a> on an FFA scholarship. After his freshman year he attended both Blue Mountain and À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ on full-ride academic scholarships, graduating with a 3.9 grade point average while continuing to work full-time at a number of agriculture-related jobs.<\/p>\n

His success in school and business is striking in contrast to the life of poverty, neglect and abuse he was raised in until almost 15. When he had no support from his own parents, a friend\u2019s family took him into their home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey taught me how to work, be responsible, and no matter what, they taught me that you can make a difference \u2014 and it\u2019s the littlest things that make the biggest difference,\u201d Dynes said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Katy Nesbitt Luke Dynes, \u201902, is the poster child for the self-made business executive \u2014 but his work goes beyond his success in agriculture. Dynes moved to Eastern Oregon as a teenager from Danville, Illinois. He attended Hermiston High School and spent summers in Elgin. Motivated to get an education and gifted with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,46,21],"tags":[23,30],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-stories","category-fall-2019","category-features","tag-alumni","tag-transfer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}