Grower’s Edge CEO Matt Hansen shares how his company has grown and changed in the ag fintech space to help ag retailers and manufacturers grow and improve their marketing, product placement and revenue.
He says the company’s technology has been a catalyst to change the conversation in ag retail from selling products to selling proof.
“If a retailer or a manufacturer is trying to introduce something innovative or new and encourage adoption, in the grower community, traditionally, it relied on trying to sell them on the proof, talk through the data, the statistics, the claims, but they’ve heard it all before,” he says. “And so Crop Plan Warranty is a way to really distill that down into ‘Look, we’re also putting our money where our mouth is, and we’re going to guarantee the yield.’ That is generally the last thing a farmer needs to hear before he decides to hit the buy button.”
As Hansen explains, Grower’s Edge launched in the federal crop insurance and data space, and then developed its Crop Plan Warranty, which has shown how the fintech tool can combat risk aversion.
“Our first product provides downside protection, or a guarantee on farmers’ yields, if they buy products from their retailer that are warranted,” he says. “And that’s both on a white label and non-white label basis.”
The company reports dramatically higher takes rates and sell through rates with the products enrolled in the Crop Plan Warranty.
“On spend for mature programs as much as, if not more than, 10 to 1. So for every dollar that’s warranted, they sell $10 of product,” he says. “It should also be noted you’re only paying for the warranty if the product sells. So it’s one of those rare marketing bullseyes where you know that the marketing’s effective because you’ve sold the product.”
Earlier this summer, the company acquired Farm Test, a performance testing platform.
“The acquisition of Farm Test is what accelerates our newest version of the crop plan warranty, which is the side-by-side,” Hansen says. “We can do an in-year side-by-side comparison. It’s something that was on our product development roadmap, but it was 12 to 18 months out, and this acquisition just brought it to the present.”
So far, 144 million acres have been covered by farmland valuation tool and one million protected by Crop Plan Warranty program
Additional Fintech Tools
Grower’s Edge now has four pillars to its product offering. In addition to the warranty program, it developed a white label input financing program for retailers and manufacturers.
About a year ago, the company acquired AQUAOSO, which includes its Agcor software for ag lenders for mapping, data and analytics.
And next, the company will launch new financing tools.
“We closed the largest deal in history for us,” Hansen says. “It’s a mortgage lending platform. We set out to create the Rocket Mortgage for ag, to make a full digital end-to-end mortgage, and rapid mortgage possible.”
Hear more from Hansen in the Scoop Podcast:
