Greg Hay

Reforestation Advisor

Arkansas, Northern Louisiana, and Oklahoma

I’m Greg Hay, a reforestation advisor with ArborGen. I cover all of Arkansas, North Louisiana, and southeast Oklahoma. I’ve been working in forestry for 45 years. Like many foresters, I began my forestry career because I like being outdoors. I think the gratification of working with private landowners in helping them establish their plantations after harvest has been most gratifying to me. Typically, when I’m working with forest landowners, their most significant concerns are confusion about the genetic availability out there today. And secondly, they’re worried about the performance or yield from the trees they have been told to expect.

I try to address their confusion about genetics by explaining good, better, and best; there’s a wealth of products on the genetic ladder. Describing it that way keeps it simple when you give them three choices. It helps explain about getting the performance and yields they’ve been told to expect.

It’s much easier today to have someone like Charles Pirtle to refer them to. Charles has planted our seedlings and now has the results you can see. They can see it for themselves that the results are real. So referring them and getting them in touch with a customer for a customer testimonial is key to that; yes, we’ve got some proprietary information on yields that we can give them with regards to a seedling calculator that will show them their net present value increase, and the return on their investment. But the customer testimonial is, first and foremost, the best way to get them over the worry they have that they will achieve the results they’ve been told to expect from my clients.

It starts with a solid discussion of what their goals and objectives are. I like to sit with them, talk to them, and find out why they’re planting these trees. What’s their purpose in planting these trees? What’s the end result they want to see from the trees they are planting? It is exciting when you have results like this, with somebody out here working the land like Charles Pearl has, and to see his excitement about the yields he’s getting. That’s tremendous, and that brings tremendous gratification to me, knowing that I sold these trees to him many years ago, and advising him on which genetics to use and see it come to fruition like this. That is incredibly rewarding to me.