High input prices have escalated the scrutiny farmers are putting toward their fertilizer products, placements and rates.
Greg Sanford leads the sales team for Verdesian across several midwestern states, and he leans on his previous experience on the retail and wholesale side of the business to assist retailers today in these dynamic conversations with customers. His first job in the industry was at a single location co-op, where he says everyone was called to do a bit of everything in the name of customer service.
“You did what you had to do to get it done for the customer,” he says. “You built trust with customers that way when you deliver when you deliver on time, the right way.”
Fast forward to today, and from his professional relationships with retailers, Sanford says three things must be true of every crop nutrient product for it to find space in a retailers’ sales sheet:
1. Application method and timing fits the norm.
“Number one, we have to have products that can be easily applied. They have to go through a fertilizer blender, mix in a tank, go through a planter box, or be on seed. They need to be able to be both easy for the grower and the retailer,” Sanford says.
2. Agronomic performance and ROI
Sanford says performance in the field is a must-have for the farmers bottom line and the retailer’s reputation to supply agronomically viable products.
3. Profitability
“Let’s be honest, retailers have to be able to make a level of margin,” he says. “Retailers are out there competing on the price of glyphosate and urea, and we’re [Verdesian] tack-on products. So they have to bring value to the retailer to make up for what it took to get that business with the grower.”
Are biostimulants a growth category?
Sanford sees a growing future for biostimulants. One takeaway he shares with retailers is this category demands correct placement and timing. He cautions retailers to not dismiss biostimulants based on one year of side-by-side trials.
“The reality is every year is different. The weather’s different, the planting season is different, throughout the season what disease pressures we’re dealing with vary,” he says. “The retailers that have figured it out to be most successful to move biostimulants and return ROI for their growers are building it into a system.”
He encourages retailers to find ways to work biostimulants into existing practices and passes across the field as they explore how the category fits into their system.
“When we have a systems approach products fit into our passes, they fit economically for the grower, they’re going to increase our efficiency of fertilizer use, and they’re going to keep that plant healthy through the growing season and through grain fill,” he says. “I’ve watched retailers that embrace that sort of mentality, and it works really well.”
What is a growth segment for inputs for the future?
“The spaces that are going to expand are anything paired with a fungicide in the late season,” he says. “When we think about herbicides, protecting modes of action, and we’ve stacked modes of action on top of each other. Also, when we look at late season with a fungicide we’ve only got so many modes of action of fungicides we can use.”
Sanford says much like the pressures of herbicide resistance, reliance on a particular set of fungicide modes of actions leaves crops susceptible to develop issues. And with emerging diseases continuing to spread geographically—such as tar spot—the demand for control is increasing.
“I think when we find the right combination of a biostimulant that can give that plant an extra boost of whether it be antibodies or plant nutrition that’s going to help the plant’s going to naturally fight off those things along with the fungicide,” he says. “It’s almost like an additional mode of action.”
Specific to the team at Verdesian, Sanford says they are focusing on three keys to crop nutrition in the year ahead: return on investment, protect the marconutrients being applied, and stress mitigation.
As such Sanford says their sales conversations are being lead with:
1. Research
“We have products with a 30 year history in agronomic research. That’s an advantage in having some of these conversations,” he says. “We have the history and the proven technologies to have those conversations, even during difficult times.”
2. Ways to add bushels
“Our retailers built sheds to move tons. They don’t necessarily want and I don’t want to tell a grower to cut back. But we know growers are going to cut back,” he says. “So how do we have that conversation and what products can we pair with that to continue to maximize yields. The reality is we still have to grow a crop. We still have to have bushels that come out of the field so that these growers are making money and continuing to expand.”
