Bringing Back More Value To The Farmer

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

One of the reasons American agriculture is so productive is because we primarily produce commodities. But this has led to the farmers capturing less and less value of what they produce. Spencer Stensrude, CEO of Ag Ventures Alliance says one of the ways they are working to bring more value to the farmer is through re-positioning and de-commoditizing.

Stensrude… “We've got government oversupply, structural oversupply in the government. We depend on certain markets that we can't impact. And then we depend on the weather to be favorable each year. And so when you've got all of those things kind of outside of your control, you've got to just look at things differently. That's why we've tried to shift the farmers to a different position in the value chain and why we're aligning them through farmer-driven innovation to actually help build the products of the future. And when they do that, they're earning equity and can have opportunities to invest along the way. That's really the problem we're trying to solve here is that until we decommoditize, which I think we are going to de-commoditize over the long run, but until then, I think we have to just move farmers back into a position where there is more value.”

Again that’s Spencer Stensrude of Ag Ventures Alliance.