Innovation Farm offers whole-acre solutions

TOLONO, Ill. — A ribbon-cutting celebration and open house marked the opening of Nutrien Ag Solutions’ Innovation Farm on March 20.

The 292-acre Tolono location includes 250 tillable acres split 50-50 into a corn and soybean rotation where product trials are conducted. The new facility built on the site features offices, meeting rooms and a work area for field equipment.

The core objective of the Innovation Farm is centered on creating scale of farming whole-acre solutions that growers can implement today.

The farm provides a value to growers through insightful data, recommended practices and agronomic expertise that helps them with their decision-making.

Thaddeus Bates, Nutrien Ag Solutions senior manager, applied agronomy, said the journey to the new facility began in November 2019 when the Innovation Farm featured a shed with no heat, water or electricity.

“However, we knew with Nutrien Ag Solutions’ vision of what we were trying to accomplish we had the most important thing when it came to ag. We had the relationships. We had the relationships with the suppliers, we had the relationships with the equipment manufacturers and we had the relationships with the growers,” he said.

“From that, internally we knew the two important components were soil and weather — the bookends of how we keep everything together. From there, we introduced what I call ET3P, which is equipment, technology, product, practices and, most importantly, our people.

“We implemented ET3P with the bookends of the soil and the weather, and we’re able to produce the most agronomically correct recommendations for our growers. That changes for every growers based off of what your equipment manufacturers is, what your budgets are, what your farm staff is and what your technology base is.

“Our goal for the Innovation Farm Network is to grow ag as a whole. We want to look at the pieces, products, practices and the people and combine those into a whole-acre solution.”

Each of the company’s four Innovation Farms have main focuses:

• Tolono, Illinois: Provides the most comprehensive variable environment to evaluate equipment, products and practices. It has the largest focus on machine-enabled agronomy of all the farms. This includes training and working closely with the chief drone pilot to ensure Federal Aviation Administration compliance. The Champaign-area farm is focused on working closely with Loveland Products and Dyna-Gro Seed.

• Selma, California: Provides insight with a permanent crop focus, adding almonds and citrus crops to the network. It is designed to deliver product via fertigation through a highly-sensored irrigation manifold. The Selma Farm also works closely with Loveland Products and several satellite farms to provide more innovative information on other specialty crops throughout the west.

• Winterville, Mississippi: Provides the most diverse set of crops. Not only does it have corn and soybeans, but also cotton and rice. It also has a large focus on cotton breeding with Dyna-Gro Seed. Along with Dyna-Gro Seed, Winterville also focuses on utilizing Loveland Products across the farm.

• Owensboro, Kentucky: Provides large field-scale trials to provide further evaluation of whole-acres solutions. It also works closely with Loveland Products and Dyna-Gro Seed for local expertise. The Owensboro Farm also utilizes the facility for training and agronomic specific assessments.

“Our goal here is to work with equipment, technology, product, practices and, most importantly the people who include the growers, our retailers and suppliers. The suppliers, retailers and the growers are all part of that triangle. All three have to win to be successful and it’s all about focusing on ROI for all three groups,” Bates said.

Open For Use

“We haven’t had this facility open all that long and we’ve already had several internal events where we brought our seed specialists in to a conference. We’ve done a drone exercise with not only our internal people, but our customers,” said Kent McDaniel, Nutrien Ag Solutions cornbelt region manager.

“We could do this technology innovation anywhere, but you get the most value out of it when you’re in the same location as where the products are actually going to provide value. I think it’s going to be really good for both our people internally, as well as all of our customers in a pretty broad area.”