Marketing-Communications

Technology Risk Takers: A Look At United Prairie's Innovation

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 18:00:00 GMT

Whether it’s a product, software or machine, the team at United Prairie doesn’t shy away from new technology. The retailer is prepared to take a leap of faith if it means bringing the best innovations to its customers.

“We have been a company that has readily adapted and grabbed the bull by the horns to figure this stuff out, even though it could be potentially detrimental in the end,” says Kyle Meece, United Prairie agronomy manager.

It’s the forward-thinking mindset and willingness to embrace change that led to United Prairie’s Tolono, Illinois, headquarters being named the winner of The Scoop’s 2024 Business Innovation Award, sponsored by Ever.Ag Agribusiness.

It All Starts With The Grower
United Prairie is a full-service ag retailer. It offers dry fertilizer, seed, custom spraying and application. Since 1996, when the company was founded, the United Prairie footprint has expanded from four locations to 14 across east-central Illinois. That growth has made the shift to modernize operations paramount.

“We needed to find ways to be more efficient and give a better customer experience to the grower,” says Curt Miller, United Prairie CEO. “It all starts with the customer. You hear their wish list, see what’s achievable and what makes sense and then go from there.”

Meece echoes that sentiment and emphasizes the importance United Prairie places on including growers in these decisions.

“The worst thing I can do, or anybody in our industry can do, is assume we know what the farmer wants,” Meece says. “We have to go ask what they want to see, where they feel like they’re lacking and what we can improve for them.”

The most impactful changes the company has implemented based on grower feedback include the following:

A customer portal and app
Fleet management tools
Drone application

United Prairie UP Connect Digital App

(Cheyenne Kramer)

Going Digital
One of the most requested updates has been the ability to digitally view and pay invoices, prepay bookings and track expenditures as the retailer’s customer base has been transitioning between generations. This is now possible with the addition of the company’s app and customer portal named UP Connect, which was developed in partnership with AgVend.

“We love to hear what kind of features they’re wanting,” says Dakota Patton, United Prairie controller. “We don’t want to push something out just because everyone is doing it.”

Roughly 20% of customers have downloaded the app, but Patton says an important distinction is that almost all of the company’s top 100 customers are using it.

“It’s not just the number of accounts. It’s the key accounts,” he explains.

Patton shares the goal with adding these tools isn’t to become totally paperless but to be able to offer customers their preferred option.

“You’re going to have some people that are still wanting paper statements and contracts,” Patton says. “I just want to be able to offer to every grower we have whatever they feel comfortable with and offer the best service.”

United Prairie uses Sky Dispatch from Agvance to notify growers when application is complete.

(Cheyenne Kramer)

On-Demand Updates
Just as popular as paying invoices in the app is the ability to check the status of an application with the integration of Sky Dispatch by Agvance.

“Some of our growers were really wanting on-demand updates of when their applications are completed, so they can dispatch tillage equipment to their fields,” says Ben Rawlins, United Prairie operations manager.

This feature has been a long time coming for the company. Rawlins explains United Prairie has been in the process of testing versions of the software for more than a decade.

“We had been playing with a version of the program since the mid-2000s,” Rawlins says. “The older versions didn’t work well with our business model. But the latest one was what we needed, and we implemented it two to three years ago.”

The new ability to notify growers when their field has been completed has created a notable efficiency for United Prairie, essentially cutting out a middleman during the application process.

“It eliminated a lot of phone calls because the manager has access to be able to see where they are in their application, and the salesperson doesn’t have to be in the middle of that. Whenever customer communication does need to be made, it automatically does that,” Rawlins says.

Carly LaFoe launches United Prairie’s spray drone

(Cheyenne Kramer)

Adding, Not Replacing
One of the most difficult additions United Prairie made is drone application.

“The drone application was more challenging than we anticipated and not as efficient as we anticipated, but a lot of the growers and people in the community are interested in it,” Miller says.

Carly LaFoe, assistant marketing manager and drone operator at United Prairie, explains in working through those challenges, the company found the best place for the technology would be on new acres.

“We don’t want to take acres away from an airplane or take acres away from a sprayer. We’re more here to help them,” she says. “If they can’t get the job done, we’ll come in and try.”

The team plans to sit down this winter and calculate just how many acres they were able to add this year by having their drones, but LaFoe estimates the Tolono drone was able to spray around 2,500 over the summer.

And while the original plan for this technology wasn’t for recruitment, it’s become a unique tool to set United Prairie apart.

“When students at career fairs find out we have a spray drone and the new See & Spray technology, they want to learn all about it,” LaFoe says. “Technology is a big part of the next generation’s lives, and they really love what we’re incorporating.”

Miller adds, “Younger generations want to see new tech and see organizations that are advancing.”

Kyle Meece examines soybeans on the United Prairie Innovation Farm

(Cheyenne Kramer)

Not Just Any Innovation Will Do
When it comes to putting new innovations in front of customers, United Prairie sets a high bar to meet.

A rigorous vetting process takes place for all technologies and products to ensure they provide a return on investment. Depending on what the innovation is, it may be tested with employees who have been known to adapt quickly, operations managers, sales managers or on the company’s innovation farm.

“We research everything we sell to a farmer. That’s not negotiable. That return on investment has to be there, or we won’t sell it. It’s just that simple,” Miller says.

Meece explains there’s a three-year process for products that make it to the United Prairie Innovation Farm, which was started 10 years ago to perform randomized, replicated trials on a small scale.

Year one: The product goes on the research farm to look for return on investment.
Year two: If return on investment exists, then the product goes to the sales team and is given to key growers to test.
Year three: If return on investment continues, then the product can be brought to market with confidence.

United Prairie’s fertilizer warehouse

(Cheyenne Kramer)

Forward-Thinking Mindset
That advancement within the company is what the team believes makes United Prairie unique within the industry.

“Our management and our operators are willing to adapt to something as quick as we can throw it at them, LaFoe says. “We approached them and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to get a spray drone.’ And we had three operators step up and say, ‘I want to learn how to operate it.’”

And it’s not just about adapting to implement a new technology or tool. It’s also the need to roll with the punches afterward.

“Anytime you try to make changes, there’s pushback, and that’s OK. There should be pushback in anything someone is passionate about,” Miller says. “There’s also going to be innovations or technologies that you try that do not work. But being able to work through those challenges makes us more efficient and helps us give a better customer experience.”

It all comes back to being a partner—solving problems for growers and helping keep them sustainable for years to come.

“We want it to be a joy to do business with United Prairie,” Miller says. “When I walk into a grower’s office and their admin staff grabs me and says, ‘Hey, we really like this. It has made our lives a lot easier.’ To me, that’s a really big win.”

Newly Released Video Highlights Career of Purdue's David Downey

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:26:34 GMT

The Purdue University Department of Economics has created a new video to highlight the career of David Downey and the creation of the Dr. W. David Downey endowed chair in agricultural sales and marketing.

“The W. David Downey Chair in Agricultural Sales and Marketing is a new chair in our department of agricultural economics, and it really has two purposes,” says Jay Akridge, Purdue professor, in the video. “To ensure that the work that we do here in agricultural sales and marketing, one of the strongest areas in our department, and to work more broadly in agribusiness, continues literally into perpetuity.”

Downey developed the first agricultural sales and marketing program in the U.S., reaching over 10,000 students and shaping agribusiness education across more than 80 institutions. Throughout his career, he has been globally recognized with numerous awards for his contributions to teaching, research and industry leadership.

“Dave was constantly looking for ways to bring what he learned in the industry into the classroom and help our students be better prepared for the work world,” Akridge continues.

This endowed chair sustains Purdue’s leadership in agribusiness education and represents an opportunity to carry forward Dr. Downey’s legacy in teaching, research and industry leadership. It will fund research in farmer decision-making, sales processes and marketing strategies.

Click here to watch

The Scoop Podcast: Learn To Meet Farmers Where They Are

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:33:33 GMT

Morgan Seger has taken her experience from working at Land O Lakes and transitioned to a role as an independent digital marketing consultant focusing in ag retail.

“I spend a lot of time working with my clients around their brand voice, what they sound like and how are they meeting their customers where their customers are spending their time, which we know is a lot on our phones on our computers,” she says.

With more of a focus on digital marketing, Seger says it’s about recognizing what has changed, but also what has not. Her focus is helping the ag retail business enable stronger relationships with their farmer-facing employees.

“It has changed a lot but at the end of the day, the way our ag retailers meet their customers hasn’t changed a whole lot,” she says. “It’s more about providing air cover for employees so when they go out on the farm that customers have a good understanding of the organization, what they stand for, and what kind of value they can bring.”

Her key tip is for ag retailers to provide more valuable information online.

“If you think about a customer’s behavior, there’s a whole lot more research online before the buy things because it’s so easy to access. So making sure that we’re putting a voice out there and we’re providing good sound information for them to learn from so that way it reinforces a relationship at the front gate,” Seger says.

Specific for the year ahead, Seger sees a potential big upswing in the use of artificial intelligence in marketing and communication. And while she says ag retailers should be experimenting with those tools, she has one word of caution.

“I would say don’t take it at face value at least quite yet,” she says. “There’s a big risk everyone starts sounding like everyone else.”
An often overlooked or misunderstood communication tool has been social media.

“Social media is one of the things that we tend to think it’s a side piece,” she says. “It wasn’t ever really a huge priority. it was just if someone has something let’s get it posted so that way we can show up online and we’re seeing a lot more. We’re seeing a lot less transactional relationship and a lot more just being social online has made a big difference for our clients.”

As for how to measure the return on investment in marketing, Seger advises using the analytics easily available for digital marketing to inform next steps.

“Each month with my clients I do a deep dive into their analytics,” she says. “We look at follower growth and reach and what performed the best and what maybe didn’t hit the mark or what was something we spent a ton of time on it just totally flopped. And then we brainstorm collectively around why is that, why didn’t we meet the mark.”

Hear more on The Scoop podcast.

9 Areas With Million Dollar Growth Potential

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 20:00:38 GMT

Do you wonder if you and your team could do a better job in areas such as cutting costs, improving the positioning against the competition, innovating your offer, raising prices, capturing more share of the customer’s total spend and seeing and selling to more new customers?

Well, your mind should wonder about these, because they are a few of the top nine areas where most companies could improve. Let’s walk through a few of these areas and get the juices flowing for how you might facilitate your next phase of growth.

Time to Raise Prices
Inflation has been affecting prices of most products and services, but how quickly have you adjusted your prices accordingly? Just raising prices without reason or notice can be a risky move for customer retention, so consider how to increase the value delivered and reprice accordingly.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you should make significant changes to your offering, but it does require you and your team to think about how you can identify areas of value you can deliver to your customer and present that value in a new and differentiated way. However, do make note of this point. The pushback to inflation-related price increases is currently about as little as we might ever face.

Don’t lose your opportunity to adjust prices before this time passes.

Make Vendors Partners
On the flip side, most companies miss some cost-cutting opportunities. Ask your team to list every vendor relationship you have. Then, group the opportunities and relationships into related buckets. Consider inviting your vendors to summits and sessions designed with them in mind. Offer to help them grow their businesses through innovative thinking around your business.

I have facilitated dozens of profit improvement dialogues with my clients’ vendors and partners with great success.

It is nearly impossible to assemble a number of vendors and not stumble upon ideas that will help grow the represented businesses. Prepare diligently with thoughtful dialogue topics, questions and exercises, and within a few short hours, odds are you will create increased profits for both sides of the table—a pretty good return for hosting a great meeting.

Even if you didn’t come up with a profit-improving idea, the relationship improvement will be worth it.

Sell Deep & Wide
I have worked with more than 350 companies in three decades of consulting, and when conducting in-depth interviews with top customers from businesses generating at least $20 million, I have never once failed to find more than seven figures of untapped potential growth.

Depth interviews are a required step in developing strategy, according to the man who first used the word in the context of business, Peter Drucker. He declared customers should be interviewed on a quarterly basis—ideally by a third party—to provide dialogue about the potential in the relationship.

Step Back & Assess
If you would like to assess how much additional profit might lie in what I’ve seen as the most common profit-improvement areas, then send my office a note, and we’ll send you a Profit Improvement Assessment checklist. Use it as part of a one-hour deep dive, and you can build a plan to help you capture an extra seven or eight figures.

4 Tips to Grow as a Leader

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 16:25:09 GMT

Sometimes stepping into leadership hardly feels like a choice, especially when you hear the age-old phrase: Someone should do something. It really hits home when you look around and realize that someone is you.

If your journey into a leadership role is imminent, one of the most important ways to get started is through cultivating influence, but building influence isn’t an egotistical thing. It’s about getting the attention of those who need to hear from you to trust your message.

Two ways to build influence are through using effective communication and building a network.

First, influential communication is about meeting people where they are and communicating with them in a way they understand and accept. For example, let’s say you need to step into leadership in your own farm operation with employees or family members. Does the process of communication currently work in your operation? If not, consider building your own communication norms.

Everyone’s different today. Some like to text, some like to pick up the phone, some like group apps, and some don’t. One of the easiest fixes is to get a norm that everyone’s bought into and agrees to use. Try to practice active listening to better understand the needs and concerns of your team.

Next, surround yourself with a support network of mentors, peers and friends who are able to provide guidance, encouragement and a safe space to share your fears and doubts.

Here’s a recap of some tried and tested ways to grow as a leader that you might want to consider going into the new year:

Join a Board of Directors
Get involved in your local community, whether it’s ag-based or not, by volunteering to serve on a board of directors or get yourself elected to the board of a corn or soybean association, town council or rural electric cooperative. You’ll learn new skills and be involved in high-level decisions that provide new insights into your business.

Build a Peer Advisory Board
If you can’t join one, build one. By assembling an advisory board for your own
business with people who have an outside perspective on your operation (not family or staff), you’ll create deeper relationships with professionals and mentors you trust. It’s a great way to bounce new ideas around with those not too close to the business.

Join a Peer-Group Network
A peer-group network managed by a third-party facilitator is a fantastic way to deepen your relationships with like-minded, growth-oriented producers. Share stories, benchmark your financials, and be ready to get valuable feedback.

Attend Workshops
Get out and go! If you don’t have at least one or two professional conferences or workshops on your calendar each year, you should start researching a few. Content, learning and engaging with others is necessary to keep approaches fresh. Hint: Top Producer Summit is coming up!

Stepping into leadership is a journey that requires courage and self-awareness. While the fear of leadership is natural, don’t let it be a barrier to personal and professional growth.

Remember, leadership is not about being fearless but about finding the strength to lead despite your fears.

2024 Top Producer Summit
Feb. 5 to 7
Kansas City

Vidalia growers gearing up for promotional efforts

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 18:49:38 GMT

The Vidalia onion industry is planning for an aggressive promotional season, said Bob Stafford, interim director of the Vidalia Onion Committee in Vidalia, Ga.

He said the committee has signed public-relations agency Porter Novelli’s Atlanta office to help promote the crop.

The committee also is working with the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s Georgia Grown program for some cross-promotions, Stafford said.

“We’re going to try to extend our promotions,” he said.

The committee also is redesigning its website, vidaliaonion.org, with Porter Novelli’s help, Stafford said.

The committee is reaching out to chefs as well as retailers, he said.
There’s also a concerted effort to reach out to younger consumers, Stafford said.

“We’ve been chasing millennials, getting them used to using our onions,” he said.

Individual suppliers have their own plans, as well.

Glennville, Ga.-based Bland Farms is working on a couple of promotions this year, said Delbert Bland, president.

“We’ve always crossed with our condiment side of the business, but we’ve got a new promotion we’re doing with a sandwich company — mayonnaise, lunch meat and onions and you buy all three and get a pretty big discount,” he said.

It’s important to work with promotional partners, said Walt Dasher, co-owner of G&R Farms in Glennville.

“We have a multitude of items which help customers succeed in promotions,” he said.

G&R’s Growing America’s Farmers scholarship-based program, designed to bring a new generation of growers into the business, is “the driving force” behind many retail promotions, Dasher said.

“The partnership we have with the National FFA Organization has truly changed the lives of so many kids wanting to enter production agriculture and given the younger generation a sense of hope in knowing that so many retailers/customers truly care about the American farmer and the future of this industry,” Dasher said.

Vidalia season creates a promotional “excitement” all its own, said Lauren Dees, sales and marketing manager with Lake Park, Ga.-based grower-shipper Generation Farms.

“Easter is late this year. You always see a big push around Easter and sales look good, and near Memorial Day there’s another big push as people start grilling outside.”

Greencastle, Pa.-based Keystone Fruit Marketing, a division of Progressive Produce LLC, has numerous “customer-specific” promotions planned, said Mike Blume, sales and marketing director.

Promotions heavily target the consumer, displaying tips on how to use onions to include recipes when possible, Blume said.

Keystone also has in-store demos with its chef, Dave Munson, in which “shoppers are selected to participate, introducing new recipes — emphasizing quality, flavor, and nutrition,” he said.

Related articles:

Retail tools to sell Vidalias onions abound

Vidalia onion acreage down

Official Vidalia onion pack date set as April 22

Agriculture's Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 06:16:55 GMT

Put a shoulder to the door of agriculture’s basement closet and loose a jumble of skeletons: Grain swindles, cattle rustling, snake oil schemes, and crop theft spill forth. But sift through the multi-billion dollar bone pile and find what lies trapped beneath: a forgotten tangle of broken farmers who paid the costs of other’s ill-gotten gains.

Farming is business; crime is a facet of any business. Yet, in the annals of agriculture fraud, one scam may rule them all. Conveniently cast aside, but seemingly pulled from the pages of a Hollywood script, agriculture’s most outlandish Ponzi scheme is a cauldron of greed, loss and lingering questions. Simply, the bizarre B & B scandal is too absurd for fiction.

A Slippery Crop

In 2000, Rodney Burkley heard about a business venture with long legs gaining steam in multiple states. A lifelong corn and soybean farmer in southwest Mississippi, 20 miles north of Natchez, Burkley wanted to add revenue beyond the rows. He spent a year gathering information and poking cautiously around the gilded edges of new opportunity. At 50, Burkley was no stranger to risk, and could usually spot pitfalls and gullies. Worst-case scenario: Get out quick and walk away with a small bag of profit.

Nine months later in July 2001, Burkley rented a vehicle and hit I-20, bound for a new chapter of farming fortune and a fateful meeting in Oklahoma City. In reality, the glistening opportunity was a trick of light and shadow. After a 550-mile drive, he walked into a tiny restaurant to hand over a big check. Two hours and one meal later, Burkley signed a $100,000 buy-in contract and shook hands with a goateed, unassuming man seated across the table. With pedestrian features, the man was the sort that wouldn’t catch notice in a crowded room. Appearances are worthless: Greg Bradley pocketed Burkley’s money and went on to bilk approximately 2,400 growers in 40 states for a stunning $25 million in rapid-fire fashion.

Bradley was in the process of crafting one of the most surreal tales in the history of agriculture crime and cons, and his vehicle of choice was truly borne of the dirt: a wriggling, slippery, multi-million dollar crop of earthworms.

Catch Me If You Can

Essentially, Bradley built a grand pyramid of worms, dressed to the nines in shiny grower contracts. Vermiculture, the breeding of worms for resale, and vermicomposting, the use of castings (worm waste material) as a high quality soil amendment, were a cloak to hide Bradley’s scam. Vermiculture allowed Bradley plenty of elbow room to capitalize on general ignorance: Other than specialized experts, the rest of the U.S. population, including farmers, knows almost nothing about worms. Vermiculture has long been abused by confidence men, but Bradley would make past worm cons look like carnival sideshows.

Bradley, along with his wife, Lynn, started B & B Worm Farm in Meeker, Okla., in 1998, with a blueprint pulled straight from Ponzi 101. B & B offered growers red worm contracts ranging from $10,000 to $100,000-plus. A grower might pay $15,000 for 100,000 breeding worms or $60,000 for 1.5 million worms, all supplied by B & B with a manual, worm harvesting equipment, toll-free help number and a one-year money back guarantee. B & B then promised to buy all the worms a grower could breed for a contract price typically set between $7 and $10 per pound. The math was simple: As long as grower contracts outpaced worm purchases, B & B would rake in phenomenal profits.

Prior to B & B, Bradley learned the vermiculture ropes as a contracted grower with a worm company called VermiTrade that was slapped with cease and desist orders in Iowa and Nebraska. Lessons learned, Bradley took leave from VermiTrade and began B & B, according to Worm Digest.

B & B was built on outrageously faulty science from its inception. Red worms hatch in 30 to 60 days and the rate of increase is exponential (both arithmetically and geometrically). Bradley lit the fuse on a worm explosion by placing a multiplication sign beside a dollar sign. “He made inflated promises and people bought in hook, line and sinker. They were forking over the cash,” says Peter Bogdanov, a renowned authority on vermiculture with a deep understanding of best management practices, and the owner of Vermico , a vermiculture business centered solely on science and research. “If Bradley’s math was correct, the world would have been awash in worms in no time,” Bogdanov adds.

Devil’s Bargain

Advertising in magazines, newspapers, brochures, and a website, the golden promise of B & B’s grower contracts began attracting farmers, schoolteachers, entrepreneurs and retirees, all convinced by Bradley’s spiel. However, he knew B & B needed a heavyweight from the vermiculture industry to provide the company with a stamp of legitimacy. Bradley found the perfect mark in Kelly Slocum.

Passionate about vermiculture and the genuine benefits it held for agriculture, Slocum was a self-educated master of worms, castings and waste management from Washington. A natural-born speaker with a razor-sharp intellect, Slocum was the vermiculture apostle Bradley needed, and a face he could present to the public. In January 2001, Bradley flew to Washington to reel in Slocum over lunch. Using a stack of documentation on worm product buyers, end-users and grower contracts as bait, Bradley told Slocum he’d found the magic-bullet market for worms.

“I’ve heard Greg described as charismatic, but I found him to be an average Joe that misused words and stretched his vocabulary too far. Nothing about him stood out, but nothing raised red flags,” she says. “I was skeptical, but the incredible potential pulled me in and overrode my concerns.”

Large scale vermiculture and vermicomposting have never found major U.S. market success. Shipping worms, feedstock or castings drops the economics every time a load is placed on a truck. Bradley touted decentralization with end-user buyers in place for regional growers. His system would be proof of concept to match growers and buyers, and the lure pulled a wary Slocum into the B & B fold.

When Slocum committed, Bradley suddenly had a reputable vermiculture specialist to front B & B. Slocum began traveling to worm farms to help growers, keynoting conferences and holding educational grower seminars. Publicly, Bradley used Slocum’s expertise to help growers produce worms. Privately, he used her name as a key of respect to open doors and make tremendous amounts of money. Slocum had no idea she’d signed a devil’s bargain: When the clock struck midnight, the mild-mannered Bradley would ruin her name and destroy her hard-earned reputation.

Robbing Peter, Paying Paul

By 2001, Bradley had the worm wheels turning, with distribution centers set up in at least 12 states and grower contract sales at fever pitch. Bradley was a star and a pied piper of sorts, capable of staring down growers with the darkest of doubts. Floyd Weyrick was farming corn and soybeans when he first attended a B & B presentation in Darke County, Ohio. “I met him face to face and I told him I didn’t believe what he was saying about worms. He boldly said, ‘If you don’t believe it then I don’t want you as a customer.’”

Weyrick bought 300 lb. of worms to start, and turned several old hog barns into worm production buildings. He made over 100 boxes (2’ wide x 8’ long) from plywood to raise worms. The boxes sat on 2x2 legs to avoid the cold with heat lamps overhead that often ran 24 hours per day. “Bradley bought my worms for $8 a pound,” Weyrick recalls. “I sold him $39,000 in worms and everything looked bright … and then the bottom fell out.”

Where were the worms going that Bradley purchased from growers such as Weyrick? Bradley set up a fictitious roster of end-user companies that were purportedly buying B & B worm products. In reality, he was playing a frantic game of musical chairs, shipping purchased worms to fill new grower contracts. As the worms came in the B & B door, he sent them back out to new growers. Bradley was using Peter’s worms to pay Paul. It was a rickety Jenga tower guaranteed to fall hard after growers bled out, but money poured in for the short-term.

Africa Awaits

“I never saw any product in a store. I never saw an end-user. I never saw shipments going out,” Slocum says.

A composting company in Iowa, or a recycling plant in Louisiana, or a market paradise in Africa, Bradley claimed to supply worm products to a long list of major buyers with deep pockets. Conveniently, his kingpin user was Sierra Leone, and Bradley claimed the west African country was establishing statewide waste management worm projects. B & B would fill tankers with worm products and ship them to Africa. The assertion was layered with far more than words.

Bradley sent an associate to Sierra Leone to send back reports of business progress, according to Slocum. “I saw pictures and videos of buildings, people and streets,” she recalls. “I never saw anything official involving government personnel.”

Bradley even put Slocum on a conference call with himself and the purported Sierra Leone minister of agriculture. “I don’t remember his name,” Slocum says, “but I sure thought I was speaking with an end-user. Now I know it was all theater.”

In June 2002, B & B applied with the Louisiana Department of Economic Development (LDED) for a $325,000 incentive grant to start a composting operation at a former ammunition plant. Horse manure from Louisiana Downs would be delivered to the plant as worm feedstock. The application never received final approval, yet B & B claimed receipt of the LDED money, according to a subsequent investigation by the Oklahoma Department of Securities (ODS).

In addition, the ODS investigation found as late as 2003, B & B told growers that Organic Technologies (OT), as Iowa’s largest composting facility, was producing tons of worm castings. In truth, ODS says no B & B worms were ever delivered to OT. (The solid waste permit of OT was revoked by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in 1996.)

Shell Games and Musical Chairs

The B & B structure was a house of cards and as growers began churning out increasing numbers of worms and castings in barns, sheds and shops across 40 states, Bradley began feeling the pressure. Immediate payments for worm deliveries turned to snags and delays. “I wasn’t getting paid for my worms, but Bradley was avoiding my calls and I knew something was wrong,” Weyrick says. “He had a whole lot of Amish farmers he’d tricked, too. None of us were getting paid.”

“B & B had been taking our worms out of crates and boxes and breaking them into small bunches. Then they sold those to new growers elsewhere. Bradley’s deals were nothing but chaos,” Weyrick explains.

Across the U.S., B & B growers were becoming increasingly anxious. Bradley had contracted with Burkley to buy all the Mississippi grower’s worms at $11 per pound for 10 years, as well as castings. “I could see the writing on the wall. People have to understand: All this time, Greg wasn’t selling any worms. He was just getting more growers,” Burkley notes.

Typically, Burkley transported worms to a distributor in Vicksburg. The load was filtered through a harvester and weighed. Burkley was handed a payment sheet stating the exact amount B & B owed for x number of pounds. The distributor held the worms on site and waited for a call from Bradley. “When Greg sold worms to a new grower, my worms were shipped to fill that new contract. Greg was just rolling the ball along. When I started, I must have also bought some other grower’s worms,” Burkley explains. “I don’t think the distributors were crooked because they also went under and lost everything.”

Bradley established a 12-seat, paper tiger board at B & B, of which Slocum, and her husband, Roy, were members. With Bradley’s refusal to answer questions, the incessant expansion of grower contracts, and a business model devoid of end-users, Slocum began hammering Bradley for answers and demanding accountability.

And then the penny dropped.

Going Down Swinging

By accident, Slocum was included in an email chain exposing the scheme to the core. Slocum was included in a group exchange between Bradley and several top associates that explicitly mentioned shipments to Sierra Leone. “It was undeniable. I was reading text that showed substitution of logging equipment for worm shipments to Sierra Leone. It was a cover to pretend worm sales were taking place.”

Slocum responded by composing a resignation letter to blast out to all grower email addresses she had on file. She didn’t realize Bradley had already seen her name on the email chain and recognized his mistake: “I was literally writing my resignation when an email arrived in my box from Greg, telling everyone involved with B & B that we’d been fired.”

Bradley’s email falsely accused the Slocums of embezzlement, including using company money to buy vehicles and Rolex watches. Walls closing in, Bradley was going down swinging.

Investigation

With grower complaints over non-payment catching the ears of authorities, Bradley heard legal footsteps in Oklahoma. The ODS placed a cease-and-desist order on all B & B grower contracts on Aug. 13, 2002. However, according to an ODS petition for permanent injunction filed April 14, 2003: “Subsequent to the date of the Agreement, Defendants sold approximately 632 Grower Contracts for approximately $14, 078,000 …”

Translation: B & B sold a staggering amount of new worm contracts directly after warnings from the ODS. Irving Faught , administrator of the ODS, says his investigators found $23 million in outstanding B & B debts: “Agriculture as a business is complicated and even experienced farmers can easily be misled when they get out of their production areas. I’m never shocked by the creativity of con-men. They seek a way to part you with your money and they thrive on the hunt. Types like Bradley are incredibly smart.”

Bradley was phenomenally adept navigating between truth and lies, and able to pivot on the spot, according to Faught. Bradley convinced Oklahoma Congressman Wes Watkins to join the B & B board. Watkins held a advisory and marketing role, but Bradley tried and failed to curry favor with several major market companies.

During the middle of the ODS investigation, Watkins walked into Faught’s office to speak on behalf of B & B. Bradley’s powers of persuasion had turned Watkins into a true believer, says Faught: “Wes Watkins sat right across from me and said vermiculture was going to solve world hunger: ‘We’re sending worm fertilizer to Africa and it’s going to make the ground productive and save people.’”

With over 800 contracted growers, Kentucky was hit particularly hard by B & B. Wanda Delaplane, former assistant attorney general of Kentucky, says the scheme spread in conjunction with a shift out of tobacco acreage for many growers. B & B’s quiet spread across the state afforded it credibility. “This wasn’t a session at the Holiday Inn where hucksters holler about gold and rainbows. It was far different because Bradley was offering an organic product that people could see. It involved equipment and a grower’s property,” she says.

“I remember our investigators going out and watching a shipment of worms leaving,” Delaplane recalls. “The investigators were in shock and couldn’t believe a market existed for such a huge quantity of worms. How could it be? Turns out, Bradley was his own market.”

Death and Questions

As with all Ponzi schemes, the end came with a bottom-of-the-barrel realization. When Weyrick delivered 400 lb. of worms to the B & B distribution agency in St. Mary’s, the load was refused. As Weyrick drove away, he faced the single biggest swindle he’d witnessed in a farming career spanning back to 1958.

Mirroring Weyrick, Burkley suddenly found payments were finished when he delivered his final worm load to the B & B distributor in Vicksburg. “It was like combining a crop and carrying it to elevator, but nobody pays you,” he says.

With B & B payments at an end and authorities closing fast in multiple states, the unusual theater surrounding the entire worm fraud hit an uncanny crescendo in January 2003, when Bradley was hospitalized in Shawnee. A few days later on Jan. 26, at age 40, the engineer of one of the oddest scandals ever to hit agriculture was dead. Bradley’s obituary ran in The Oklahoman on Jan. 29 and attributed his death to an “infection.” The obituary was notable for its elevation of B & B: “… a muti-million dollar company… B&B has become the largest grower of earthworms in the world … The company currently has more than 2,400 growers in 43 states. There are also 20 distribution centers that support these growers and the company has recently begun expanding internationally.”

Bradley was cremated and a memorial service was held at First Assembly in McLoud, conducted by Rev. Clyde Quick: “I’d been asked to visit him a couple of times at the hospital for some kind of infection. He didn’t seem terminal. From my perspective he looked like a healthy young man that was going to recover, so it was very unexpected when I found out he died.”

The main speaker at the memorial service was Rep. Watkins, who maintained belief in Bradley’s integrity, mentioning B & B’s impact on farming and malnutrition in Africa, according to Quick. Despite a climate of payment chaos, Quick estimates over 50 B & B growers attended the memorial, testament to the faith many maintained in Bradley.

“I know a farmer from Indiana that went all the way to the funeral in Oklahoma,” Weyrick says. “It was all so crazy when people refused to realize he was crooked until it was too late.”

“Pyramid guys make you scratch your head because of the devotion of their victims,” Delaplane describes. “Time and again, I’ve seen cases where followers refused to see the truth.”

The Oklahoma State Vital Records Index lists Gregory M. Bradley as deceased (1/26/2003, Oklahoma County). However, with an ill-timed death at 40 as authorities closed in, and millions of dollars in question, many growers harbor doubts that linger today. “How could we not think it odd? I first heard he died from a brown recluse spider bite, and then I heard it was pneumonia. It was impossible to dissect the facts and frankly, I still don’t believe we know what really happened,” Slocum says.

“I don’t care about death certificates or what anybody thinks,” Weyrick adds. “I said all along Bradley ain’t dead. Cremation? I think he went to Mexico with millions of dollars belonging to farmers.”

Follow the Money?

Following Bradley’s death, Lynn Bradley took the helm of B & B. On March 19, ODS launched an official investigation of B & B. On April 3, Kentucky officials delivered a cease and desist order to B & B. On May 6, the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance filed a cease and desist order against B & B. By May, at least 10 state agencies were pursuing legal action against B & B. (According to ODS, B & B continued selling grower contracts as late as April 1.)

B & B slid into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and the investigations went cold. If Bradley had not died, ODS would have referred his case to the district attorney and he likely would have faced a 10-year jail sentence in Oklahoma, according to Faught.

And the money? Roughly $25 million had been pulled from the pockets of growers. ODS was able to track trace patterns. The ODS petition for permanent injunction filed April 14 states: “Defendants have used proceeds from the sales of Grower Contracts to pay personal expenses of Gregory and Lynn Bradley; to make wire transfers to a relative’s auto parts business in Arizona; and to make wire transfers to an adult entertainment enterprise in Las Vegas.”

“There was always a cast of behind-the-scenes characters in cahoots with Greg and they all knew B & B was a scam,” Slocum says. “I believe there was money passed around, but I can’t prove any of that.”

Kentucky growers lost nearly $5.75 million to B & B and the case still haunts Delaplane: “I don’t know what happened to Bradley and the money and I remain bothered. The whole ending was so strange and perplexing that a person can’t help but wonder. When I think back on my cases during my career, this is the one that stands out. I’m not comfortable with the ending and it’s still a puzzle.”

Grifter from the Get-Go?

A Ponzi scheme is doomed because it inevitably runs out of victims, and Bradley knew B & B would topple in short time. “His endgame was to run until the pyramid collapsed and then hope he had enough explanations to hide behind. However, as a con-man, he may have just loved to prey on other people,” Delaplane says.

“Bradley was a smart liar right from the get-go,” Weyrick describes. “He had stories to cover everything from worm sales to big American businesses all the way to Africa. In the end, there was nothing he didn’t lie about.”

“I suspect he was a fraud from the start,” Faught echoes. “Con-men are usually inveterate sociopaths. They satisfy deep longings by taking people’s money. One thing I’ve seen in my career with con-men: Lying and cheating are stimulating habits that never change.”

“I believe Greg was a sociopath,” Slocum adds. “Worms or another means, he was going to take people’s money. He sucked in energy and accolades from the crowd and loved being loved. His lies turned to hell in a handbasket for everyone below. I think his plan, right from the beginning, was to bleed as much money as possible from growers, and then disappear.”

Hard Lessons

Outside of agricultural business, farmers are not typically high risk takers and don’t seek adventure; adventure is already abundant in a daily crop battle with Mother Nature. The farmers taken in by Bradley were not the standard crowd attracted to pyramid schemes. They were trying to add side-stream income, not chase riches or instant wealth.

The vermiculture industry is no stranger to con games, which surface in cyclical fashion and are quickly forgotten. However, B & B was far more refined than the others. Weyrick, 84, sued B & B for $110,000, but never recouped a cent. He’s certain worm-related hustles will revive again: “I want other farmers to know this is coming back. It’ll blow up and people need to be on the lookout.”

In July 2014, James Lawhorne allegedly set up a fraudulent worm farming business ( Wormz Organic ) in Concord, N.C., contracting with growers to produce red worm castings for an initial $5,000 fee. Ironically, in July 2015, Lawhorne was sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud charges involving an organic tomato racket in Alabama.

Drinking from the Firehose

When Bradley died and the wine went bitter, contracted growers were forced to finish the bottle. As B & B fell, it pulled the savings, pensions and mortgages of farmers into a financial abyss: legal silence for approximately 2,400 growers.

Beyond the financial devastation, reputations were destroyed in B & B’s wake. Slocum’s good faith investment in Bradley’s veracity cost her dearly.

Slocum’s B & B tenure turned into the worst two years of her life, she says, but the aftermath was equally tumultuous. She was often the boots-on-the-ground B & B lieutenant, assuring growers all was well. “I went to these farms and met the loveliest of people. They looked me in the eye and asked, “Can you tell us if this is a scam?’ I looked back and told them, ‘No way and if I ever get wind of anything crooked, I will absolutely let you know.’”

Slocum’s reputation was first sullied by Bradley’s false accusations, and then blackened again by association when the B & B structure crashed. “B & B stole Kelly Slocum’s tremendous knowledge to justify their unscrupulous business. Then they besmirched her name and threw it aside,” Bogdanov emphasizes.

Behind a veil of tears and tremoring voice, Slocum’s turmoil is palpable: “I was humiliated and horrified that people thought I’d been complicit. Professionally, I was forgiven by the entire community, but it made me feel so guilty. Frankly, I am guilty because I felt I should have paid a price. It was hubris to think I could spot a scam.”

“It’s painful looking back at the entire ordeal. I was drinking from the firehose. I learned so much, but the good that came out wasn’t worth the pain I caused or experienced,” she adds. “Even today, sometimes I feel as if I lived a movie.”

Web of Half-lies

On the grower side, Burkley, 60, row-cropped all his life and lost three crops at harvest to the reach of the Mississippi River. Floods are the cruel mistress of farming; con-artists are not. “Farming is the biggest risk in the world and I started worm production to get some control,” Burkley says. “But I never really had any control because it was taken away by Greg Bradley.”

Pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, Burkley lost over $160,000 to B & B. “I worked my ass off, but couldn’t get past Bradley’s dishonesty. Because of him, I did without and my family did without, but God saw us through,” he says. “It hurts too bad to dwell on the loss.”

Ponzis and pyramids, half-lies, sleight of hand, a curious death, Africa, worm farming and so many more motley ingredients made for a surreal chapter in American agriculture. In a different form, that chapter is sure to repeat somewhere down the line. The B & B fraud hearkens back to the “half-lie” maxim: A man who tells half-lies is worse than a man who tells lies. The man who tells lies knows exactly where the truth is hidden, but the man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

For more, see:

Living the Dream: Honoring A Fallen Farmer

Blood And Dirt: A Farmer’s 30-Year Fight With The Feds

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

Pigs Don’t Fly: Feral Hog Spread Is A Man-Made Mess

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Who Killed the Finest Soybean Soil in the World?

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The Secret Life of Farmland Marbles

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Cotton Farmers Go 'Grown in USA'

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 06:16:51 GMT

Jerry Allen Newby plans on wearing his 2017 cotton harvest. As the Alabama farmer drives a picker into a sea of Alabama cotton under the painted blue sky of a clear October day, Newby is gathering fiber from his family fields, but he’s also collecting his clothes for 2018.

“Made in the USA” and the American farmer just got a big boost from Wrangler . In an effort to highlight the sustainability of the cotton industry, Wrangler is purchasing 40,000 lb. of Newby Farms cotton to feature in a line of denim jeans. Wrangler’s Healthy Soils Platform is piloting with Newby Farms in Athens, Ala., but will expand to particular growers in all 17 cotton states.

“I feel like Wrangler’s sustainability initiative is also an American initiative. Maybe this is cotton’s version of food to table ,” seventh-generation producer Newby explains. “People will know where their jeans come from and they’ll know the jeans were literally grown in the United States.”

Utilizing a mix of no till, variable rate application, soil moisture sensors and cover crops, Newby’s growing methods mirror the initiative driving Wrangler’s new effort. “No-till, crop rotation, cover cropping, soil grid mapping, variable rate, IPM, and water efficiency are all practices we want in our cotton products. Within 10 years, we want all our products to contain cotton grown sustainably,” says Roian Atwood, director of sustainability at Wrangler.

Jeans made entirely from Newby cotton will be available in fall 2018. Atwood says Wrangler’s sustainability initiative will extend across the Cotton Belt: “We want to become familiar with the different cotton farming communities and never be overly prescriptive. Our soil health practices are going to vary from region to region and this will be a sampler’s platter. We want this program to encourage land commitment and stewardship.”

The Newby family typically grows 3,000 cotton acres per year and is a partner in Moore and Newby Gin, which churned out 7,500 bales in 2016. “It’ll be great to see jeans straight out of our fields, but we’re excited because this could be a real shot in the arm for American cotton in general. A ‘Made in America’ tag shows the importance of farming and can help make the public realize the necessity of a strong agricultural backbone.”

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