Wellspring Of The Value Chain
Delivering advancement in digital agriculture takes scale. That’s the takeaway from the one-on-one Ever.Ag leaders shared with The Scoop.
Ever.Ag CEO Scott Sexton; chief marketing officer Toby Lee; and Ernie Chappell, founder and senior vice president, strategic development, agribusiness, say they want to equip agriculture for data-driven decisions, greater transparency and new opportunities for profitability.
When asked about the 2021 acquisition of EFC Systems, Sexton says, “We had identified the ag retailer as a critical role in delivering value to growers and EFC had established a winning portfolio, deep customer relationships, and strong credibility.”
He shares a similar pattern in the dairy business, where Ever.Ag blended unique domain experts and built a system around a digital backbone to layer on additional capabilities.
“EFC’s legacy products start at the wellspring of the value chain,” Sexton says referring to FieldAlytics, MerchantAg and its commodity management and procurement systems. “They provide the key operating systems, business management, digital agronomy and critical parts in the value chain.”
As founder of what is now Ever.Ag Agribusiness, Chappell shares its key is to give service providers tools to work away from the office to ensure quality data curation.
“It has been and will be our focus to allow service providers a valuable role in providing data insights and be the curator of the most complete set of records for a farming operation,” Chappell says. “As an operating platform, we must give growers and advisers connections and embedded technology.”
Since founding his company 35 years ago, Chappell has seen FieldAlytics and Merchant Ag used by many of the top 10 retailers.
Chappell says the next 24 months will be an inflection point in the industry.
“Everything up until now has been a dress rehearsal,” he says. “Those who adopt technology will lead the charge in optimizing value to their customers and those who haven’t will wish they did.”
Sexton says the past 30 years of digital agriculture have worked to reduce paper records, eliminate siloed data and bring an end to aging systems.
“But we’re still sitting in the relatively early stages,” Sexton says. “At the same time, technology now is advancing at a rapid clip, and you’ve got to get aggressive. With our line of sight across best practices in meat processing, dairy processing and expanding into other verticals, we see how the industry is getting increasingly competitive and demanding an advanced use of data.”
Building Alliances Under Its Umbrella
Sexton uses the word interconnectedness to describe finding synergies across verticals. Another recent acquisition — of Roger, a dry bulk hauling management tech firm — highlights this approach.
“There is a very thoughtful construction of the ecosystem to position clients so they don’t have to make connections themselves across their data,” Sexton says.
Lee adds Ever.Ag has acquired 12 companies in the past 12 years.
The leaders underscore how opportunities with carbon and ecosystem markets are unveiling greater need for data at scale and data transparency. It’s Ever.Ag’s strategy to offer the toolkit across its verticals to be ready for those opportunities.
Chappell boils it down to how the service provider can stay close to the farmer. He says, “The retailer who is helping the farmer solve the trifold of challenges — economics, agronomics and environmental — is who will help the farmer the most, and there will be money for all.”
