Conservation Training for Ag Retail

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Advocates for more sustainable agricultural practices often focus on changes that farmers can make. But in our modern agricultural system, the trusted advisor is an important component to any farmer management changes. Tom Ryan is the president of Truterra, the sustainability division of Land O’Lakes. He says a big part of their approach is training Winfield United ag retailers in modern conservation practices.

Ryan… “There's a definite need for a different type of agronomic support. When you talk about conservation agronomy, it's much different than the type of agronomy that I worked in when I was in retail where I was a certified crop advisor. You know, now there's a much greater need for that understanding of how do you take the traditional agronomic skill set and then marry it in a way that can bring forward this conservation skill set into a new type of product knowledge or support that we provide growers. One's not better or worse, they're just different. And that means we have to train differently. We have to scale that population across the retail network, and that's one thing that we're really focused on within our Smart Commodities grant is around building the talent capability specifically around technical services.”

Ryan leads the Truterra team that helps farmers and retailers make economically and environmentally sound decisions. He’s also a farmer himself in southwest Minnesota.