Putting customers in position to win

TOLONO, Ill. — Food, feed and fuel production is a global business, but it still all comes down to finding the best solutions for individual farmers on their fields.

That’s the ultimate goal of ag input companies that provide the products, and Nutrien Ag Solutions’ Innovation Farm Network is putting those products and technologies to the test at speed and scale in whole-farm environments.

Nutrien Ag Solutions marked the opening of its new facilities at its five-year-old Innovation Farm near Tolono on March 20.

The open house and ribbon-cutting featured comments from several of the company’s representatives. Here’s what they had to say.

“Since the first of the year, I’ve been in Brazil, Argentina, Australia and India. I’ve watched these countries that have really been behind us from a technology standpoint in agriculture. This technology is becoming so easy to use today that a lot of these segments of agriculture in other geographical areas are skipping some stages that we went through and going right straight to the new technology that’s available there.

“One of our biggest jobs is to make sure we are keeping our growers informed. What we’ve always done best in this country is adopt to new technology, but I think that adoption rate is going to have to come even faster as we start to compete with some of these other areas from an agricultural perspective. What we should be able to do here today is to ensure that we put our customers in a position every day to win.

“The one thing that came to mind when entering this facility is our growers should never ever be introduced to new technology or data from anyone else quicker than from Nutrien Ag Solutions. With the capabilities we have with our Innovation Farms we should be introducing our 600,000 customers globally to anything new that’s going to advance their return-on-investment and productivity. We should be first to do that.

“It also came to mind, we work with all the multinational suppliers and as they witness our commitment to these Innovation Farms and with the strong relationships and bonds we have with them, innovation will come to these farms much earlier than we would have seen as a network in the past.

“These Innovation Farms are all in support of that proprietary line, as well. We can now develop a concept and get it to the farm so much quicker when we have all the Innovation Farms to work with.

“On the seed side, we used to test our Dyna-Gro in state trials, but more importantly in the trials with our suppliers. At the time it was Monsanto, today it’s Bayer and Corteva and others, but you can’t ever think that you’re going to get the absolute best representation if you don’t have your own sites, as well. We’ve seen a general improvement of what we’ve been able to do from a selection standpoint of the germplasm because we’re sourcing most of that from our suppliers. It’s just allowed us to be a lot more accurate with the capital that we’re putting out and then the solutions for our growers.”

Jeff Tarsi, president

Global Retail

“We are a global business with a large agronomic footprint across the world to bring the best solutions to our farmers, and really that’s what this Innovation Farm is all about. It’s about how do we bring the best solutions, tested solutions, which is really the difference that this farm brings. We get to test the solutions.

“I was at the Commodity Classic a month ago and there were a 1,000 solutions there. You walk around and see this thing brings 5% more yield, that does 10% more yield and this does 20% more yield. We should have yields tripled if we do all that, but we all know not all those solutions work as advertised, not all of those solutions work on this particular farm or that farm.

“Having four of these Innovation Farms around the country allows us to really test these solutions out so that they’re farmer ready when they hit the field and that’s what it’s all about.”

Rob Clayton, senior vice president

North American Retail

“Each year we collate all of the technology we’ve been testing, both products, equipment, as well as software, and we put this in a book. One of the reasons we do this is we don’t want any secrets about what’s going on on these farms.

“We’re here to help not just Nutrien, but also the wider community around farming with the technology and opportunities for growers to profit. That wouldn’t be possible without industry collaboration and we look forward to continuing those collaboration.

“The second aspect is around ag education. We have a great collaboration with the University of Illinois. We have our first FFA ambassador winner, Avery Watson. (She conducted a two-year research project at the Innovation Farm comparing the differences in using older and newer high-tech planters.)

“We’re looking forward to continuing to work with the FFA community, as well as with other next generation of agriculturalists that support the local area, as well.

“The final topic that I’m passionate about is soil health. We’re lucky here to have the largest testing location just up the road — Waypoint Analytical. It’s also the venue for our soil biology testing. This is something we’ve been investigating for the last three or four years.

“We like to think of it as the next frontier of agronomy. When we think about soil health and nutrient use efficiency, we feel it all starts with the soil when it comes to yield and the legacy of the family farm.”

Paul Bonnett, senior director

Nutrien Agronomy