To help its retail owners and growers through tougher times in the ag cycle, WinField United says it’s focusing on three aspects of its business: products, services and connections to new markets.
“It’s amazing the amount of risk in agriculture along with the complexity and change in the environment now,” says Leah Anderson, Senior Vice President of Land O’Lakes, Inc. and president of WinField United. “The cost of total inputs for the corn acre is up 39% since 2019. It’s up 54% on a soybean acre. And we’ve seen a decline in net farm income over the past two years.”
Anderson says the local ag retail network is uniquely positioned in the market.
“The power of the reverse ownership model we have—take the size and scale and capability of WinField United and match it with our retailers’ local trust, knowledge and relationships and it’s powerful,” Anderson says. “Because of this head start, there’s a ton of opportunity to lead in this moment.”
Boiled into one theme, Anderson and her team say it’s about innovation.
“There are many ways innovation will influence us moving forward. And it’s beyond about thinking of innovation in a bag or a jug,” says Glenda Gehl, vice president of R&D for WinField United. “Product innovation will also be alongside taking the technology, machine learning, insights and what’s making our industry speed up and make it understandable and impactful for our retailers and growers.”
With product innovation, the team at WinField United is aiming to provide a robust, rich pipeline of products along with clarity in product choice. In the next three years, the company has 80 products coming to the market.
“Sometimes a grower has an agronomic problem or a convenience problem—they need a reliable solution to the problem and they need something that isn’t too complicated, like a complicated tank mix. Likewise, the retailer has to navigate the grower changes,” Anderson says.
To help provide product selection confidence, WinField United introduced BioVerified, which Anderson says aims to eliminate the “cloudiness and confusion” of biologicals by taking applied research into the recommendations for product placement and timing.
As for services, leaders say what they have developed is more important than ever.
“Services include helping give growers access to financial tools. And when corn is below $4, those things really matter more,” Anderson says.
As an example, she offers Advanced Acre Rx, which is a service warranty for a prescription that is backed by WinField United.
The third focus highlights another platform WinField United has been developing in how it helps growers access new markets.
“It’s about connecting ways growers get paid for how they are growing a crop on their acres as well as how many bushels they are producing,” Anderson says. “This starts to matter more when you are potentially losing money on every acre. It helps growers spread risk, it helps the retailer be the hero, and it requires data.”
Examples include Truterra’s carbon offerings, and the leaders hope to introduce a water stewardship and management program in the future.
One retailer who has found success with such programs is the team at Mercer Landmark led by Greg Culp.
He explains the cooperative has four pillars to their business: innovate, grow, develop and perform, and everything ties back to those four things.
“We have to have the mindset of growth in everything we do. We have a conservation agronomist on our staff who understands the ins and outs of cover crops and soil health. It’s about agronomy first, do what’s right for the soil and the grower,” he says.
He offers two examples: one being Truterra carbon programs and the second is a pilot with Campbell’s on wheat acres for premium payments.
“We’ve found success with both. And with the carbon programs, we have passed on hundreds of thousands of dollars in the carbon program,” he says.
Internal Evolutions On Top of Bringing Innovation to the External Market
With the forecast for tighter profit margins in row crop agriculture, WinField United is looking to inject increased efficiencies and insights into their operations.
“Having transactional insights that inform supply chain efficiency and improve how we use working capital—these are the next frontier to make data work harder for us,” Anderson says.
She goes on to say WinField United wants to weave its partners closer to their business by standardizing data and have enhanced visibility throughout the transaction process.
“Today, I would need to call dozens of people to estimate channel inventory levels,” she says. “The future is going provide a one click answer of exactly what is at retail and then deeper information such as the split between proprietary and generics.”
Another efficiency goal is in transportation and reducing road miles in returns and reallocations.
“When we talk about data, it starts with agronomic data and then we layer in transactional data—that’s where we are going when we talk about getting smart with data,” she says.
Employee training and retention is a focus for how technology can help alleviate operational pain points.
“We see 25% of sellers in our retail network churn every year,” Anderson says. “This is leading to retailers being exhausted. So, we are creating an AI assistant that will replace the 500-page product guide with a tool trained and fueled by WinField United’s millions of agronomic data points and insights.”
The goal of the AI assistant is to reduce the time in the product recommendation process by streamlining how sales representatives can narrow down the products considered.
“This is an example of how we will combine and stack our system’s data and technologies to activate the retail seller and make them a hero,” Anderson says.
