Beneath the fields, a plan for agriculture’s future

Chad Klotzbach knows the agriculture world is often do-it-yourself, typically due to the farmers’ independent streak, a desire to save money, or a lack of firsthand experience.

However, he has also found that some things, like the drainage systems offered by his company Alleghany Services, do not work well as DIY projects.

“I think at times the industry seems like it’s really easy. Like all it is, is just putting pipe in the ground,” Klotzbach says. “We’ll have customers be like, ‘I tried (drainage) once, and it didn’t work. I say, ‘Well, what did you do?’ ‘I went to Home Depot, I bought some pipe, and I stuck it in the ground.’”

“I’m not saying you need an engineer to help you, but I can tell you kind of multiple ways why that probably didn’t work,” he laughs. “ But hey, that’s kind of agriculture in a nutshell. If I can’t figure it out, my neighbor knows how to do it.”

Klotzbach was appointed CEO of Alleghany Services and assumed the role from his father in 2019. He says he has been focused on expanding its scope ever since.

The company began in 1983 as Klotzbach Excavating and operated out of Corfu, Genesee County, with a single backhoe and bulldozer. Since then, the business has undergone a few name changes and expanded to include even more aspects of agriculture, construction, directional drilling, and farm drainage.

By growing up on a farm and helping out, he says he quickly developed an interest in the machinery, eventually earning a degree in civil engineering and later an MBA. Alleghany Services is based in Basom, about 20 minutes outside Batavia, and currently employs about 40 people. Until 2010, there were only five employees.

Alleghany Services has worked with farms as far along the East Coast as the Carolinas up to Maine. It still maintains a large presence here.

“Monroe County, Genesee County, Ontario County, Yates County, pretty much every county in New York with agriculture, we have customers there,” Klotzbach says.

One of the most important products Alleghany Services provides is effective drainage systems, Klotzbach believes. It first uses GPS and topographic mapping technology to determine the direction of water flow and create a vertical profile. From there, trenching and tile plowing are performed before piping is installed, depending on the system being used.

“In layman’s terms, it’s like your potted house plant,” Klotzbach explains. “It’s the hole in the bottom of that pot, so your plant doesn’t sit there wet. You can let it dry out by not watering it, but you can also kill it by overwatering it. That’s really what we’re addressing at a much larger scale.”

These systems range from controlled drainage and saturated buffers to constructed wetlands and drainage-water recycling. Once installed, they result in more consistent crop growth by reducing nitrogen and phosphorus loss. In some cases, the systems have yielded improvements up to 30 percent, Klotzbach says.

Klotzbach, who has been a Genesee County legislator for multiple terms, also considers himself an “accidental advocate” for farmers. By virtue of his expertise, he serves as a voice explaining the complexity of certain issues.

“We just want to make sure that, whether it’s us, whether it’s our customers, or whether it’s even competitors, that they have the information to do it the right way and ensure that they’re doing what’s good for their for their farms and also for the environment,” Klotzbach says. 

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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