Innovation in Sustainable Agriculture Starts in the Field, with Ryan Bond

Adapt or perish. It's an imperative as old as agriculture itself.

But as the modern ag industry grapples with the need to reduce costs for growers, improve margins and improve sustainability outcomes, Nutrien Ag Solutions must double down on innovation in order to meet those demands.

In this episode, Ryan Bond, Senior Director of Crop Protection & Nutrition Innovation at Nutrien Ag Solutions, outlines some of the cutting edge developments that the company can offer its grower customers and shares examples of how those input technologies are creating sustainable efficiencies on the farm.

Plus, Tom and Sally remind us that, even though agriculture is rooted in our local fields, what happens on a global level affects us on our own operations... and vice versa. They discuss how big picture issues like international climate agreements and climate change-driven extreme weather are a concern no matter where you grow.

Episode Transcript

Ryan Bond:

When we're developing products, we do like to have that local context. And that's where we have those 3000 crop consultants - that's our largest listening system. If we do a really good job of listening, then we can take those insights and put those into an R&D program that really gets specific. And then we can leverage the other capabilities that we have in Nutrien.

Dusty Weis:

Welcome to The Future, Faster, a sustainable agriculture podcast by Nutrien Ag Solutions, with our very own Tom Daniel, Director of Retail, Sustainable Ag and Dr. Sally Flis, Senior Manager, Sustainability Field. This is your opportunity to learn about the next horizon in sustainable agriculture for growers, for partners for the planet. To us, it's not about changing what's always worked. It's about continuing to do the little things that make a big impact. On this week's episode, Ryan Bond, Senior Director of Crop Protection and Nutrition Innovation at Nutrien Ag Solutions joins us to discuss how innovative tactics and products are driving results for growers in the field and helping Nutrien Ag Solutions meet its sustainability benchmarks.

Dusty Weis:

But if you haven't yet, make sure you're subscribed to this podcast in your favorite app also make sure you follow Nutrien Ag Solutions on Facebook and Instagram. I'm Dusty Weis, and it's time once again, to introduce Tom Daniel and Sally Flis. Tom and Sally, when you spend all your time working in the dirt, the news about what's happening at big global environmental summits might seem awfully far away, but it's important to remember that the big picture is always going to have an impact on us here at a local level as well.

Sally Flis:

Yeah, Dusty, there's been a lot going on over the last month between the Sustainable Ag Summit that we touched on during previous episodes and what came out of that all the way up to United Nations' 26 Conference On The Parties or COP26 on the climate, where over 130 countries participated in meetings and a lot of big high level decisions are made. And I would agree, it's really hard to think about how does that global scale challenge impact those decisions we're making in the field. So with over 130 countries participating in the meetings, there were a lot of big decisions made. That'll impact us down to the field level, but it's hard to think about when we're out walking a field, taking soil samples, making a cropping recommendation, how are those things really going to impact us?

Sally Flis:

Two that came up that I think are probably the most relevant to us are some new rules for trading carbon credits across borders. I know we talked about that with some of the projects we have and this emphasis on nations setting more ambitions targets to reduce emissions. So Tom, these can take some time to trickle down to the farm level, but there's really a call for more transparency and verification, for meeting and communicating on these commitments. How do you see our partners shifting what they're asking for in the next year, based on some of the outcomes of a big meeting, like COP26?

Tom Daniel:

Yeah. Sally. One of the things that, just kind of referencing back to what the COP 26 is, and by the way, for those that don't know, COP stands for Conference Of The Parties and 26 is the year, so it's the 26th year of that conference. Most of it focused around the Paris Accords, which are around controlling climate changes for CO2 and the warming temperature of the earth. So trying to keep it between now and 2050 below a degree and a half of temperature increase over the whole globe. And what I think is the main component right now is this is a global discussion, it's not just a US discussion. When I talk to farmers and I know when you do too, they say, well, why should I do this when they're not going to do this in this country or this part of the world, but this is an agreement now between, as you said, 130 different countries that have agreed to these climate goals and pushing toward controlling this increased global warming situation.

Tom Daniel:

And one of the key components of that, you can make a claim, it's easy for all of us to make a narrative claim around some of these goals, but the key's going to be data. And I keep using that word. It seems like, Sally, every podcast we have, we bring up something about data, but that is what's going to determine whether we are getting to the finish line, if we're progressing toward the goal, all of those things are going to be determined by data. And everyone says that agriculture is going to be a huge component of this climate change initiatives that we have in front of us, right?

Tom Daniel:

And so farm data is going to be one of the key components going forward. We're going to have to have good detailed data off the farm that's going to give us indications that we can move forward. And I say that for this reason too, because we talk about getting growers paid for practice changes and those type things, but there is also a big push right now for there to be some, I'll call them gatekeepers, police people, or whatever you want to call them around this environment stuff. And you hear the term a lot around greenwashing. We don't want people to greenwash things. In your own word, Sally, what does that term mean to you, greenwashing?

Sally Flis:

Yeah. So for me, Tom, greenwashing is all these unsupported claims, right? We've seen a few of them this year, where everything from there's no data to back up the claims to in the carbon markets where groups have gotten called out for trying to generate or generating and trading carbon credits in forestry for forests that were never going to be cut down anyway. So there really isn't that opportunity value to preserve them and pay for keeping them in place, because they're not in a location where they were going to be eliminated anyways. And you've got the story about the soil health farm in the Dakotas, where they tried to implement a program, and I think it wasn't a bad program they were trying to implement up there. They just didn't think about that whole acre aspect of it, right. And all the different things that need to change.

Sally Flis:

And did they really pick the right location? But they used that investment in soil health farm as the way to support regenerative ag. And this is how they're going to get more on the ground, but then they don't have anything to show for it. So there's people watching out there and I know Tom, you read an article recently talking a lot more of about the pitfalls of making commitments or claims where there's no action associated with them. I think that's the other piece, right. They are claims being made that really can be executed. There's some pretty big claims out there about net zero or reducing emissions by 2030, which isn't that far off everybody thought 2020 would was a long way off when they made those first round of commitments and we've passed them and most of them didn't get to where they hoped they would. So what were some of your reflections on reading that article about, and if it was really an article informing consumers more about how to judge or interpret some of these claims or commitments that companies are currently making.

Tom Daniel:

One of the big things, Sally, I picked up from the article... And look, it's not just the article. I think we heard some of this at our Sustainable Ag Summit that we went to a few weeks ago. So I think there's a lot of discussion around how do we get to these measurements? How many companies have come out, if you Google right now, companies that have made environmental claims, how many of them have made claims right now that they're going to get to a net zero by 2030, or reduced by X number of percent by 2050. All of these goals are out there, in fact, our own government has made a goal of what a 51% reduction by 2030 I think? Regardless, we've had multiple different statements made and nobody's got a way to measure a lot of this yet. Nobody has set up the standards and it's not just around environmental change.

Tom Daniel:

When we think about sustainability, Sally, I always think about just the agronomy side of it. How do we make changes and produce better food on the farm? But there's just as many things around the sustainability of social aspects of farming, right? We've got as many consumers right now concerned about labor practices and safe working conditions for workers that are part of agriculture today. And so all of those things are now becoming into play and you've got consumers that are actually asking for this information. They want to see where their food came from, who produced it, how it was produced and it was done in a social and environmentally positive way and they want it measured. So to me, that's one of the key components of what we're looking at right now and I just think the perception by the consuming world right now, it... Look, we live in a world today. People have dollars to spend, and now they're starting to make choices on how they spend those dollars. So that to me is becoming a key component right now.

Sally Flis:

And I think these two topics, Tom, bring us back to something that I know some of the team sort of gets on me for is trying to bring us back to, this is always a systems level discussion while our last few podcasts have focused pretty specifically on nitrogen management and the rollout of this nitrogen management program that we're going to have for 2022. We do have to remember as we talk about sustainability, we're always referencing that social economic and environmental aspect.

Sally Flis:

And I think one of the big things that we're seeing as some of the end of the year reports come out on weather patterns, some of the recent extreme weather events that we've seen that are really the top of our mind, that even though we've got programs that focus on specific practices and outcomes, we've got to get back to that system level approach all the time. So as we think about that and the data needed in order to help make these really substantial claims, what are some of the tools available to farmers and crop consultants that help them dressed this constantly as we've seen, changing landscape of sustainability, that's out there at both a local and an international level?

Tom Daniel:

Well, we see a lot of discussion and look, the weather extremes, I don't think any of us can deny they're out there. Now. There's been a time that there was lots of discussion especially at the breakfast table, well, this is a made up type thing, but when you experience climate change and that's what we've been doing, we've been experiencing climate change now for the last few years.

Dusty Weis:

One of them came real close to you recently. Didn't it now?

Tom Daniel:

Oh yeah. Dusty. We were very fortunate where I live, that we weren't engaged in some of the tornadoes and things that came through here, but there's a lot of people going through a lot of suffering today. But you look in California at the situation around the wildfires. You look at the drought that's occurred in the upper Midwest. You look at the flooding, that's occurred in the Southeast.

Tom Daniel:

I mean, it's just one environmental catastrophe after another. And it's because you starting to see situations of extremes. So just like the tornadoes that just came through at my home on that Friday night at midnight, we were at 82 degrees. Now that's in December in Kentucky at 82 degrees, that's a bad place to be. And 24 hours later, we were like 36 degrees and those type of extreme patterns just create lots of problems. So Sally, going back to what you said, how do we change some of those things? That's when we get into the discussions around making actual changes on the farm, for instance, or around some of the things we do in production in general, that can reduce the CO2 emission piece. Tillage is one of those issues that over time we've released a lot of CO2 back into the atmosphere, just because we've done a lot of intensive tillage.

Tom Daniel:

So reduced tillage of any type can help keep CO2 emissions from being released. Anything that we can do to create a green and growing crop on an acre that keeps sequestering CO2, those are all going to be positives at the farm side. And so we want to be concentrating on those things, nitrogen management, all of those key components. And look, Sally, you said we've been talking about nitrogen a lot, but nitrogen management's a key component because nitrous oxide is a huge component around carbon. So there are so many things that we can do on the farm that can impact and have positive environmental changes. And those are the things that from a sustainability focus that we just need to be concentrating on in the future.

Dusty Weis:

And Tom it's worth noting too, that that next big solution to climate change might be a technology that we haven't even discovered yet. And that's where the innovation piece of the puzzle comes into it. And so that's what we're going to tackle next in this podcast episode here, taking the heady concept of innovation and bringing it down to the farm level. What does it mean from my operation? What does it mean from my bottom line? And so coming up in a moment, we'll be talking to Ryan Bond. Who's got his fingers on the pulse of how innovation is paying dividends for growers right now, that's in a moment here on The Future, Faster. This is The Future, Faster, a sustainable agriculture podcast by Nutrien Ag Solutions. I'm Dusty Weis along with Tom Daniel and Sally Flis. And we're joined now by Ryan Bond, Senior Director of Crop Protection and Nutrition Innovation at Nutrien Ag Solutions. So Ryan, thanks for joining us.

Ryan Bond:

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Dusty Weis:

You know, Ryan, in agriculture, we throw the term innovation around a lot, but it's typically associated with product or technology manufacturers. So what is an agriculture retailer like Nutrien Ag Solutions investing in innovation? What's the value there?

Ryan Bond:

Yeah. Great question. Innovation to me is everywhere and technology and agriculture is rapidly evolving. I think we can all have a good appreciation for that. There's new players entering the market space every day and we're moving upon multiple fronts and focused on aligning efforts to celebrate innovation at Nutrien. And I dare to say Nutrien Ag Solution is more than just a retailer that distributes products from point A to point B. We're really an engine of innovation, helping partners bring growers better ways to farm. For example, over the past 10 years, we've invested probably close to a billion dollars with a B to expand our global R&D capabilities focused on seed breeding in crops like cotton and rice, canola, cereals. And those are brand that usually is either Dyna-Gro or Proven here in the States and other brands internationally as well.

Ryan Bond:

And then we're developing novel crop protection and plant nutrition products ultimately marketed as leveling products. So as I kind of look at things, there's more than just the product innovation as well. And on the due digital side of the house, we've made significant investments in our digital agronomy capabilities that help us harness agronomic data and insights and I know you've had a lot of conversations on this podcast around those types of insights from data. And then we leverage the data coming from the Waypoint Analytical soils labs and other places to really eventually turn those insights into outcome based recommendations grounded in what I call in the sciences.

Ryan Bond:

And they're really made by our retail crop agronomists, those recommendations, and those are handed over to our grower customers. So as our contribution across the network of strategic partners grows, so does our impact and each and every innovative product is a solution to a problem that we know our growers face. So with all this being said, I'd say we are the engine powering the network of agronomy technology innovation where the value of all these efforts sits with our grower customers and society at large.

Tom Daniel:

Yeah. Ryan, you and I've had a lot of discussions around innovation and the projects that you're working on and just how they actually interact with what we term as sustainable agriculture, right? So can you give me some ideas? What is your team focused on right now when it comes to the focus of sustainable agriculture?

Ryan Bond:

Well, simply put the Nutrien Ag Solutions R&D group is focused on efficiency, productivity, sustainability, and profitability, and we're solving for them all. And I'd classify nearly a hundred percent of our R&D resources are geared towards a more sustainable agricultural system. And to be more specific, my team is focused on development products, across five key areas, one being nutrient use efficiency, two being soil carbon use efficiency, which is a new topic altogether, three crop protection and plant nutrition, the fourth one being water use efficiency and the fifth one is really something that's emerging in the agricultural space as well for some time is clean technologies and renewables. So for example, my team would take of a grower back approach leveraging the 3000 plus agronomists that we have calling on growers, where we take those insights and we focus on specific grower challenges limiting crop productivity, yield or quality.

Ryan Bond:

And these agronomic challenges obviously vary by the region or the countries. So we're focused on supporting growers across the seven countries that we operate in from North America, South America and Australia. And within that, all the challenges are slightly different, but they have some common themes, for example, in the nutrient and water use efficiency arena, we've developed technologies that have afforded growers to produce more with the same amount of fertilizer or irrigation on the same amount of land. Obviously, producing more per land mass is a more sustainable approach and other cases such technologies have allowed for less fertilizer water without any negative impact on yield or quality. So within each of those categories that I've mentioned before and more specific challenges are represented and may require a single technology or a combination of technologies that are synthetically derived or nature based. Think about biologicals that really kind of solve for each.

Sally Flis:

Ryan, in your response there, you touched a little bit on what we've talked about in our opening session of really this is always at a systems level, right? Sometimes we get swayed a little bit that there's a product or a practice that's the one answer that's going to make this all work. So when you're testing these things in the field, how do you account for all these different variables and differences in practices and way these products are used across the landscape as we roll this out to 3000 crop advisors so that we get the best use of new products and strategies on the ground?

Ryan Bond:

So I'd like to think about, or we'd like to think about an R&D as well as our crop consultants do as well as that ag is local and it truly is, each situation that we find ourselves in is slightly different than the one before. But at large, when we're developing products, we do like to have that local context. And that's where we have, a Nutrien Ag Solutions, those 3000 crop consultants, as you reference there, that's our largest listening system that we have. And so if we do a really good job of listening, then we can take those insights and put those into an R&D program that really gets specific. And then we can leverage the other capabilities that we have in Nutrien beyond just our field scientists. We can leverage the scientists that sit there in the digital agronomy team as well.

Ryan Bond:

We've actually worked towards putting together a really robust pilot program over the last two to three years that we call trials to solutions. And so within that, we're working across the corn belt this year, and we'll be working across the Southern region and we've worked across the Southern region this fall, where we've taken more of a replicated R&D trial type of systematic approach where we mix and match products and we leverage that mixing and matching of those products. And we go across the acre, variably applying these different products, turning on and off different spray nozzles and things like that to where we can actually scale up, traditionally a small scale type of approach to R&D. We can scale that up to the field level and give really detailed on farm type of knowledge base and data coming back to say which solution or which mix of products works best in this particular field versus another field.

Sally Flis:

Tom, we've heard that as we talked, I think every grower this year as we approach them with new solutions or opportunities in carbon markets, why something doesn't work for them and getting through that conversation. And so knowing that these resources are available as we continue, these sustainability conversations is really critical to getting to that 75 million acres that we talked about on the previous episode.

Tom Daniel:

That's exactly right. It really does. And Ryan, one of the key components, you and I've had multiple discussions about this, but one of the key components of sustainable ag is resource protection or regenerative ag, as you hear that term used a lot. But I know you are a huge component of soil health. That's one of the things that you've spent a lot of time in your career on. So give me some ideas, how do you focus in the innovation today? How are you focusing on soil health measurement or how we improve our soil health pieces and, and what does soil health have to do with productivity and other key components of agriculture?

Ryan Bond:

Well, I am a soil scientist, so I'm glad you asked the question. I can nerd out on this probably all day, every day. Simply put, a healthy soil is required for biomass productivity, implants, and microorganisms, and plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. And I know you guys have had a lot of conversations about carbon here recently. Soil health also determines the capacity of the soil to function as a productive and stable ecosystem to sustain the plants and other living organisms. So improving soil health results and enhance water quality, enhance resilience to environmental change, enhance carbon sequestration biodiversity. You can think about disease, suppression of healthy soils, and then greater productivity of food and feed and fiber and fuel.

Sally Flis:

So Ryan, in these pilots that you guys are doing and the research that's going on out on the ground, obviously return on investment, increased efficiency, return to the grower, increased productivity are all really important factors, but are you guys also looking at how do these different practices that are more sustainable or influence soil health, or use of some of these new, innovative products that are coming out impact the quality of whether it's an orange or corn grain or whatever that product is that gets to the consumer?

Ryan Bond:

Yeah, we're looking at not just yield as the ultimate measure, but the quality of the harvest, right? And so there's a bit of, from a sustainability perspective on how we derive the products in which we administer to the crop or to the soil. We're looking at soil help but also looking at plant health and I think they're kind of not mutually exclusive one plays on the other. And so as we look to design products that are more sustainable in nature, if you will, there's probably a variety of different levers we need to kind of look at and monitor on that product development piece.

Ryan Bond:

But the biggest piece, is really focusing on not only this yield, but also the quality. And so if you're looking at sugar and color of apples or what have you, or you're looking at trying to lessen the amount of microtoxin in grain, or maybe increase the protein level of grain or what have you, those are the types of innovative technologies that we are obviously looking to promote and distribute and develop. And so we don't have to necessarily have all that internally built. Our ecosystem's quite large and wide when we start talking about bringing new, innovative solutions to our grower customers. And so I think that's leveraging technology from the outside as much as the inside.

Tom Daniel:

So, Ryan, I'll ask you this question. When we talk about sustainability, we see a shift today, even around in our crop protection products where we're moving somewhat away from some of the synthetic type produced products and more to what we term today as a bio pesticide, where do you see that work within the innovation team today? How is that being addressed?

Ryan Bond:

Yeah, I mentioned earlier that one of our pillars that we're focused on is crop protection and nutrition. And so as we say, our basic beliefs in the headwinds and tailwinds that are facing synthetically produced crop protection products or fertilizers for that matter, it's leaning towards softer greener alternatives, renewables, things like that. And so we're keenly focused on taking a look at those different technologies, sourcing those internally or externally and bringing those forward. It does allow for us to tap into obviously a lot of different expertise. We have strategic partnerships at various universities, various strategic suppliers, and what have you to bring the best technology forward, but it is trying to do more with less and more with the greener technologies, like I said. And so it's a movement that started not just yesterday, but it's been years in the making. And so we're now seeing, and that would feel like we're somewhat at a tipping point to where a lot of these technologies, like in the bio fungicide that we're developing now for targeting citrus greening, for example.

Ryan Bond:

Those types of technologies really didn't exist years ago, but now we're starting to see that some of these technologies that leveraging some of the biomedical type of approaches are coming forward to have some application utility and agriculture at a cost that's not like the pharmaceutical companies. That is something that we can get to scale in agriculture and apply in a way that's still affordable and has the return that we're looking for. And so will see a lot more movement in that space. And we've been strategically focused on trying to build out our capabilities to focus more on that over the last 10 years, as part of those dollars that I mentioned before that we've been spending. So I think there's still a lot of room to grow, but we're starting to see, like I said, the efficacy and the efficiency of these types of products be at parody in some cases with the synthetics. So it's an exciting time to be in agriculture and see those types of technologies come to life.

Sally Flis:

All great stuff. And we keep going back to this system's level of thinking on things. And one of the things that we all know, and I'm sure hear about daily, that's impacting these system level decisions right now are the high fertilizer prices and challenges with distribution. So one of the programs we're introducing this year, as you might have heard, Ryan is our nitrogen management a program where we're hoping to generate emission reduction credits for growers as they face these challenges of price and supply on the farm. And we're going to pair that with some of the Loveland products that are out there that you've done work on and have touched on a little bit today. Can you tell us a little bit about what Loveland Products is and some of the technologies you see on the horizon and maybe some of the top products for looking at managing your fertilizer inputs a little more efficiently in a year where we're faced with both supply and price challenges?

Ryan Bond:

Yeah. Well, Loveland Products is a 50 year old company within the Nutrien family. It's an exclusive supplier, a manufacturer of a variety of different products from crop protection to plant nutrition type of products. And they have very unique technologies there to go in and talk about when we talk about nitrogen really, or nutrient management that go in and drive more efficient use of those commodity inputs. And so those products have been part of our portfolio for quite some time, and we continue to refine and build out those different technologies and different types of products.

Ryan Bond:

And one particular brand family would be like our Nitrain type of products where we're talking about stabilizing, the nitrogen you apply to decrease the amount of loss of nitrogen. Soils are a very leaky system and managing nitrogen is part of the challenge there within that. And so we have products that help stabilize the nitrogen. We also have within the Nutrien family, ESN, environmentally smart nitrogen, which are polymer coated nitrogen. And so as we look across all the different ways to manage nitrogen, for example, there's probably six or seven different types of technologies that we leverage. And if you put those into that systematic approach, we can mix and match again to better manage that.

Tom Daniel:

So, follow up question on that Ryan, you mentioned products that are actually nitrogen stabilizers are in the category of stabilizers, but actually we can increase nitrogen use efficiency by just driving productivity on the acre too. So I know you guys are driving for increased productivity every day, so any ideas or thoughts around the innovation piece for productivity?

Ryan Bond:

Well, as far as nitrogen is concerned, I kind of think about two distinct nitrogen cycles and I live in the world of physical product development, right? So, there's a lot of different ways to manage nitrogen as you mentioned, Tom, on crop rotation, tillage and things like that, but from a products perspective and technology that go inside of those commodities to make them more efficient, I really think about two distinct nitrogen cycle, one that resides in the soil and the other one that resides in the plant or the crop. And let me explain a little bit more about what I'm thinking there. So now managing the one that's in the soil is probably just as complex as an internal nitrogen cycle from a plant physiological perspective. And so, however, a lot of what growers practice to best optimize infertility is encompassed in the four R approach of to Nutrien stewardship.

Ryan Bond:

So that is the right source, the right rate and the right time and the right place to apply for fertilizer. That internal cycle has everything to do with the consumption and assimilation of nitrogen that's available. Just so happens that in some cases there's more nitrogen available to the crop than it can consume at any one point in time, based on either the application methodology, the sole nitrogen cycle, whether and what have you. So we're trying to better understand and optimize that internal system to nitrogen cycle inside the crop, as much as we are to the external cycle that's in the soil. So having said all that, I see a lot of technologies that can be and have been developed and adopted to increase nitrogen, use efficiency, some which are more impactful than others, but when all combined one can see really a step change in the nitrogen use efficiency on the farm.

Sally Flis:

Follow up on that, Ryan. I'm sitting here thinking about, we talk about nitrogen, we touch on phosphorus a little bit, but what are some of the other things, whether it's in that plant nitrogen cycle or that soil nitrogen cycle that are going to impact our efficiency. So we think about the four Rs. When I was at TFI, we used to talk about how the four Rs apply to any nutrient you're applying, having the right source, rate, timing and placement of any nutrient. So what are some other things as you travel around the world that you see impacting nutrient use efficiency that aren't these primary NPNK things that tend to be top of mind all the time?

Ryan Bond:

Farmers are trying to manage crops across a variety of different regions and soil types and weather patterns and things like that, right? So as you kind of look across, or in my travels, I look across all these different types of regions where farmers are trying to grow a productive and high quality crop. There's a lot of pressures like we talked about on the Nutrien side of things, but there's also a lot of pressures when it comes to abiotic stresses. And so those are kind of the hidden things that are there at times that are yield-limiting or yield-robbing that may be limiting some element to more productive growth cycle for the crop. And so I think as we look across all these different complex growing conditions we're looking for technologies to kind of lessen the impact of some of these hidden stressors.

Dusty Weis:

You know, Ryan, I've come to learn over the years that you could set the table with some of the best tools ever made by man and still at the end of the day, whether it's from inertia or whether it's from fear of the unknown or for a variety of other reasons, Hey, things are working, why monkey with something that's not broken. Folks won't adopt them, so how do you get this innovation to take root in the practices that are being employed down on the farm?

Ryan Bond:

Great question. Simply put, I think innovation is useless without adoption and so with that, Nutrien Ag Solution is we're going to leverage our 3000 retail agronomists that work closely with growers across the seven countries that we service. And so I like to think that we can continue on with what we call our trials to solutions program, and that's where we're taking a small R&D approach, but scaling that up to the commercial size and applying those types of replicated trials at scale on growers farms, we're also leveraging our innovation farm network, those are the farms that Nutrien Ag Solutions actually owns and operates. And with that, we know we're taking technologies across our supplier network, whether, like I said, they either be internally or externally originated and we're bringing those onto our own farms. And so we get to do contra-season trials where we're looking at bringing technologies forward and piecing those technologies together into an integrated solution that really helps build the confidence of our retail agronomists, but transfer that confidence onto grower's farm. And so that's where we're headed.

Dusty Weis:

Well, and it's just really cool stuff at the end of the day. And so it's great to hear that it is getting, put it into practice out there and that you're finding new ways to put it in front of the grower because, and I'm going to do my best, Tom Daniel impression here as Tom likes to say, you have to meet the grower where he is. And so that's what you guys are doing. And we're really excited to hear how you're doing it here, but Ryan Bond, Senior Director of Crop Protection and Nutrition Innovation at Nutrien Ag Solutions. Thanks for joining us on the Future, Faster.

Ryan Bond:

Thanks for having me.

Dusty Weis:

That is going to conclude this edition of The Future, Faster, the pursuit of sustainable success with Nutrien Ag Solutions, new episodes arrive every other week. So make sure you subscribe in your favorite app and join us again soon. Visit futurefaster.com to learn more. The Future, Faster podcast is brought to you by Nutrien Ag Solutions with executive producer Connor Erwin and editing by Larry Kilgore III. And it's produced by Podcamp media, branded podcast production for businesses, podcampmedia.com. For Nutrien Ag Solutions. Thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.