CropLife Retail Week: CPDA/CropLife America Highlights, Farm Science Review Report, and CropLife 100 Update

Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski discuss their recent trips in California and Ohio and another CropLife 100 consolidation is in the news.

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*This is a partial and edited transcript:

Eric Sfiligoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of Crab Life retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj, Editor, CropLife and CropLife Iron. Here with Lara. So you apparently got the memo. Green shirts is what we’re doing today. Lara. Welcome.

Lara Sowinski: Thank you. It’s good to be back home.

ES: I was going to say that I’m going to actually start off this week’s video, kicking it over to you, because I guess you were you were in a familiar place in, San Diego, California, attending the CPDA annual meeting.

So if you could, give our viewers who might not have been there themselves some of the, takeaways, highlights and key points of interest from that meeting.

LS: I will thank you. Yeah, it was good to be, back in the in the Golden State, and familiar haunt of San Diego. Honestly, I, just can’t thank Terry Kippley and, CPDA enough.

It was a fantastic meeting. Just chock full of, great content, great speakers. Just everything was wonderful. So, Terry and Kara both, Greg, leave just thank you for your hospitality. It was awesome. I just got back last night, Eric, as you know. So I have so much good stuff, but as you mentioned, definitely want to give some highlights of what we heard.

The annual meeting and, I kind of quickly went through some of my notes and there were three, key topics amongst many, but three that, I have, some good notes on. And those, pertain to labor, clean data and the herbicide strategy just released by the EPA. With regards to the Endangered Species Act.

So, on day one of the meeting, we started with the senior executive panel. And for all star panelists, Jeff Bunting of GROWMARK, Dr. Paul Barnett of Nutrien Solutions, Amy Tasting, Wilbur Ellis and Leah Anderson of Winfield United. And on these three topics of labor, clean data, as well as the essay, which was a prominent theme throughout the meeting.

I, have some little highlights from each of these four speakers that I wanted to just share with everyone. So, I started with Jeff. So in addition to this is how great it was for me as, you know, you know, from CropLife being there, not only did we get to be there and hear the, meeting in the panel, but, Terry was kind enough to arrange one on one interviews for me with each of these panel panelists.

So I got to really kind of, delve in deep. So, without any prompting, just kind of started with the general question, you know, one of the biggest challenges, what do you know, what’s working, what’s not kind of thing. And, Jeff offered up late labor right away is, the biggest challenge for growth. Mark. So, you know, number one, kind of that retaining and recruiting top, top talent.

He really said that was, something key. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Sure. It’s a tight labor market. But he didn’t mention particularly with, the younger folks coming into, he said, you know, a lot of them are gamers. A lot of them are really savvy, with even, like, consumer drones. He knows they are, you know, they just wanted this stuff very easily.

They take to it. And it’s been really helpful as they have, you know, a lot of their, staffing now is, is comprised, you know, they have a lot of young people coming in. And he said as far as change management adapting to new software and systems that Romar is putting in place, he says, it’s been really encouraging seeing, you know, these young people embrace it.

Take to it very easy. There’s not, you know, a considerable learning curve, if you will. So, again, per Jeff labor is still one of those top things, Paul Barnett over at Nutrien AG kind of said the same thing. So we kind of talked about, you know, where does I play a role in maybe easing some of that labor?

Component, amongst other things that, retailers are facing? He did emphasize something about, you know, this thing of with, with, with data and we’ve talked about it before. But for me, it really stood out because each of these speakers as well as others, during these last few days, mentioned that, you know, as we looked at AI more as a problem solver, like anything, you know, for years, you know, garbage in, garbage out.

So that emphasis on clean data, gathering clean data, making sure that what you’re feeding AI, if you will, is clean in order to get the results that are accurate and that you’re going to make decisions upon. So, and so, on the, you know, cleaned out in, clean data out kind of thing, Paul did mention that, you know, if you don’t have that local data in particular around soil, around yield, it doesn’t matter how great the AI is.

You need to feed it the local data as well. So he wanted to make sure that that was part of this conversation about clean data. Likewise, he said, you know, AI has a role, whereby, you know, farmers, retailers, a whole our community is already having to adopt and adopt just so many different parts of the business.

Now, you know, data being, you know, now we’re sitting in front of a screen, we’re, you know, interfacing with, you know, autonomous vehicles. You know, that whole thing, he said, where I can really help is to take all of the complexity of what we’re dealing with now and to simplify it. So he says, I working to, improve that user experience whereby the complexities in the background and again kind of take that workload, if you will, of the user, he says.

That’s another area, that we need to to focus on, you know, that I can can help with rather than kind of, you know, serve as a, as a challenge or a barrier. Amy, they sing, talked about, late labor as well. I, had talked to her after the panel and I said, well, how bad is labor?

You know, having her like, labor. Labor wasn’t. And she goes, it’s not great. And I loved how she kind of said that, but she did say, you know, there’s a lot of dimensions to it. It’s not just the salaries and, you know, the cost of a headcount, if you will. It’s the cost. And then benefits, i.e. health care, inflation that has contributed to the onboarding process.

I mean, it’s just more expensive. There’s a dual challenge of not only attracting, young people to, but, the cost of labor across the board is a challenge. We also talked about, you know, big data as well. And, she did say that, you know, ad tech is actually, you know, a draw again, for young people like, you know, labor and tech technology, some similar to Jeff, you know, whereby young people, obviously, they grew up with that.

So it’s a little bit easier for them and it’s exciting for them as well. She did talk about, obviously, though, the, technology and the human intervention, the human interface. I mean, those two have to work together. Tech is not necessarily about replacing labor. It’s working in tandem with and a big theme of, the program this year for CPD was collaboration as well.

So this kind of hit on that. So again, Amy said it’s not one or the other. It needs to be both. And she did say something that, stood out for me as well. She mentioned that, you know, she’s been waiting for big tech to try and solve, and we as an industry have been waiting for big tech to solve some of our data harmonization challenges. So, she said that still is an area that needs to be addressed. And once that is unlocked, there’s a lot of power there. If you can combine those, those data sets. So, harmonizing that data, huge opportunity as well. And then lastly and we’ll see a clip here in a minute. Leah Anderson from Winfield United, she when she was speaking on the panel, she was talking about, you know, we were talking about companies allocating funding and investment for, technology and she said, you know, you can’t really separate the two.

Like, you know, we’ll put money here over here for technology and then we’ll put money over here for R&D or whatever. She said, you know, just you have to think of them as one. I mean, technology underpins really so much of what’s happening not just within, and, companies, but obviously virtually every sector across the board. But she did come from a, she just come from a technology background.

And she did kind of caution. And we’ve heard this before is to, you know, make sure we’re not introducing technology for technology. So it be really crystal clear on the problem that we’re trying to solve. And, so that, you know, something that she mentioned, as well as making sure that the data was clean and standardized and flowing smoothly.

And, again, that was, again, I can’t say it enough because it was constant, throughout these last few days, you know, now that we’re at this point with technology and data, it’s gotta be clean. It’s gotta be clean. She says that when Fields United, they collect 6 million data points each year. So you can imagine, how important that is.

As she said, that it has to be clean. So much, in the way of decision making and support for things comes from data. So, this this is really important. She also mentioned on on AI, they’ve been, seeing it, helping, with onboarding new employees. And, whether that’s translations services, for new employees that maybe English isn’t their first language.

Likewise, helping them, during the onboarding, time to understand, you know, safety things and, you know, kind of like an AI assist. What can we have them? What can we have it assist with? She said she’s seeing a lot of, I, applications in other areas of HR, writing job descriptions, posting on hiring boards and a lot of admin kind of support.

So, those are some of the takeaways. Again, there’s so much more that I’ll be able to go through. Let’s take a listen to this clip from Leah Anderson. She’s talked about, talking about activating. So sellers, she’s talking about technology, helping them to not get burned out. And again, using data that’s clean to support the decision making and farming.

So, again, Leah Anderson from Winfield United, let’s take a listen.

Leah Anderson: We must help them be more efficient, help them get to the point where they’re not burning out and they feel like they have to quit their job, use tools and technology to take the insights and the data we have and bring them to life and activate people locally, where the real work gets done.

Jerry mentioned this earlier, also using the data on behalf of the industry, on behalf of what we’re all trying to accomplish together, to make sure that we can move that regulatory needle. This is not just selfish about us being able to sell more of our things. This is about helping all of us make sure that our regular regulators, our policymakers, understand what actually needs to happen to make farming happen and to feed the world, making sure that they understand our science and getting safe, proven technologies approved for use as farmers grow their acres across the US.

Thanks again to those that help participate in our event. It was really a success for all of us as we got adjuvants approved as part of, the guidelines around draft. I’ll end here kind of where I started. We are cooperative. Everything we do is on behalf of our owners making sure that they’re successful so that we are.

LS: So that was Leah and a couple of her PowerPoint slides here. During the panel discussion. And the last thing Leah did mentioned talking about and your, as you heard her say, using data to move the regulatory net needle and, you know, during the conference, again, you know, we were invited to attend as well, the recent release of the herbicide strategy from the EPA and, certainly CPD was work to, advocate for drift reduction technology, adjuvants as a mitigation tool.

And for compliance with the. Yes, that was a huge, that was just a part, of everything, every panel, you know, we were talking about the ESA, whether it’s staffing at the assay, other regulatory challenges. The people part of it, the, the timing, the competitiveness of the US, community and, you know, slowing down the process or the reasons either due to staffing, etc., and how that, impacts our competitiveness against, folks, you know, outside of the EU, the U.S, I mean, there’s a lot of things that we talked about, I did want to mention, not only in our, our crop life, October issue.

I have an interview both with Alex Dunn, the CEO of CropLife America. Talk about that. My editors column. I also have Scott Rollins from the CPDA talking about some of the impacts and, kind of the ABCs of ESR, as we’re calling it, which as you know, we’re going to be covering in a special report, with, the CPDA as well.

We’ll do a special report. And that will be, part of probably, December, issue. And then we have a couple of web webinars that we’re doing on this topic. We’re you know, going to be covering this pretty intently. We have our first webinar in November 15th. Details to come on that it’ll be a panel discussion on, the EPA’s herbicide strategy.

And overall, what they’re doing, with regards to compliance with the PSA. So yeah, that’s exciting. And I think that’s, that’s all I could, talk about at this moment. But like I said, there’s just so much and it was such a good program, great to be out of the office and meeting with people. And we’ll have a lot of coverage on what we learned, at the annual meeting, as well as our upcoming special report on the ABCs of EEOC.

ES: Very good. All right. Well, thank you for that, Laura. Yeah. Sounds of jam packed. I know while you were out and about, as was I, I know as you were running around the the beautiful, sunny parts of California. I was in central Ohio, actually, every year at this time of year in September, they have the Farm Science Review on the Molly Caren Fairgrounds, which is just west of, Columbus in the state of Ohio, my home state.

And, one of the speakers there, of course, is, Barry Ward from the Ohio State University. And every year Barry gives a talk at this, event. And, this year, the one thing he was talking about was a little bit somebody asked him a question regarding 2025 crop input costs and potential profitability for growers.

So here is a video clip of Barry talking about those, those topics and what he thinks.

Barry Ward: See, we don’t see any major swings. You know, we, we typically see just some nominal changes in seed costs more for those. And, especially the newer genetics, some of you see that showing up chemical, you know, just before I came up here, it’s off to a good friend out here that was sharing that, there may be, you know, even more, cost decreases in some of the products out there.

Now, it’s going to vary by, you know, your own particular relationships with your own, suppliers. But there’s, there’s going to be some under pressure. You know, we’ve got a lot of generics out there in the sector. And a supply, of those can lead to some of these lower prices. And we saw that from 23 into 24.

So that’s one of those pieces that I don’t think we’re going to see at least a lot of increase. And perhaps we may see some decreased fertilizer. It’s a mixed bag. Nitrogen phosphorus potassium and potash. You know, the potash market I’ll start with that. Generally global supplies are very good. So we’re we’re seeing some pretty good buying opportunities now and likely that’s not going to end through the fall.

So there’s probably going to be some good buying opportunities in potash. Nitrogen. That’s also a mixed bag. You know we’re looking at a lot of product. You know, I’ll be the 28 liquid or anhydrous ammonia, not a lot of urea utilize on our road crops in Ohio, but it’s a global marketplace. We’re competing with all countries in South America and all those Asian countries that utilize a lot of urea, other things.

So it’s, it’s a balance. And right now it’s it’s fairly evenly balanced, at least from what I’ve been reading and understanding. So, I think the crop price and the margin outlook is going to also. Well, it’s going to be the primary factor, I think, going forward in terms of directing nitrogen price. The other thing is natural gas.

It’s also, not an a real pain point. So that should help alleviate some problems. As far as nitrogen pricing, phosphates, the difficult one. You know, we’ve got some, global, tightness in the phosphate market. And there’s a number of reasons for that. You know, we’ve got a lot of, curtailment of exports coming out of Russia and also, China and that not that phosphate is a big problem there.

But, you know, there’s some geopolitical issues that are also increasing some of the prices, especially nitrogen, that middle East, all that that’s going on there. So fertilizer mixed bag. But I think overall the total cost per acre, I it’s flat to lower.

ES: So that’s what Barry Ward had to say. Lara again is he described 2025 is his early read.

It’s going to be a mixed bag. There’ll be some positive, but some negative. But the big takeaway is although, grower incomes are expected to be down, he says that based on the early read, the cost of production for growers will be lower than it was in 24 and 23. So that will be a plus. So yeah, for sure for sure.

Yep. Mixed bag. Mixed bag. Yes. We’re going to hear that a lot I suspect I think so. So hey what are the thing I guess is a mixed bag. This is that time of year. Of course, when I you’ve been talking about our December issue, and I’ve been knee deep and trying to get folks to get information back to me for our annual CropLife 100 survey.

So I’m happy to report about 70% of the ag retailers have gotten me back their forms, but I’m still missing 30%. So by the time this video airs, the, missing 30% should have the third requests from me. So please try to get those forms filled in and sent back to me by the end of September early October, so I can put all the information in the database like you were talking about clean data.

I want clean data. I want to be able to enter it all. So I have something to write about in our December issue. But, I did want to mention I found out a little bit information about the number 100 company from last year’s Crop Life 100. That was Wickman Chemical of Iowa. I actually found out when I sent them their form that they, they have decided to sell their business.

This was a husband and wife team. Eric and Tammy Wickman started the company in 1998, but now they’ve decided to sell to our friends at Landus Cooperative, also in Iowa. So as of October 1st, Wickman will be part of the Landis group of companies. So the number 100 company from 2023 will not be there in 2024 as ranking.

But our, our congratulations to them for all the years that they were a part of the CropLife 100 so good luck to, to the Wickman. Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. Good luck as well. All right. Yeah. Could be with all right, Miss Laura. Yeah. So, hey, we’ve been we’ve been throwing out a lot of information in this video.