Tracy Linbo, Chief Commercial Officer at Growers Edge is on the latest episode of The Scoop podcast. She shares her insights in how ag retail can take the wheel with fintech.
What does fintech mean to agriculture?
Financial technology—or fintech—is really trying to bring tools to growers that help them manage the uncertainty around utilizing new products and services and technologies—whether that be through a warranty, like we do with the crop plan, or providing very reasonably priced or rated input financing. Fintech can make sure that growers have the confidence to use the product.
You’ve worked in ag retail, so how do you see fintech as a tool retailers can use?
One of the things that we would see with growers is when you would bring a new technology to them—be it precision technology, or maybe it’s a new product or even something like sustainable practices—where they want to try it, they have good understanding of the technology, but there’s too much uncertainty for them to try it on their own. The warranty that we help put behind these products and services with the retailers gives the growers that extra peace of mind that they’re not doing this on their own.
How is Growers Edge partnering with ag retailers?
We have two platforms at Growers Edge: warranty-backed crop plans and, on the lending side, our input financing offer. We are setting up those services for growers through ag retail. The two platforms securely use private data, public data, our data analytics and the retailer’s agronomic expertise to bring fintech to growers.
Data are underlying these tools, so what should be kept top of mind?
Data success starts with good data in and good data out. Most important—beyond just collecting good data—is management, protection and privacy of the data. So for us, we take all of that very seriously to be sure that the growers’ information is maintained specifically to them. And we know that’s very important to ag retailers as well.
