Trifecta For Working With Farmers Today: Ease of Doing Business, Unique Offering, Financing Solutions – The Scoop

Nick Sawyer is the agronomy director at Five Star Cooperative in northern Iowa. He shares what is driving their business forward, and the three things that stand out as tools to bring value to customers and differentiate their business in the marketplace.

“My job is to tie all the different pieces–fertilizer procurement, chemical procurement, sales, strategy, operations–and just try to try to bring everything together and make sure that everybody’s talking, everything’s jiving. And we’re getting the right thing done for the farmer,” he says.

Sawyer is part of The Scoop’s 40 Under 40 program, which is sponsored by Nufarm. You can see the full list of awardees here.

He has almost two decades of experience in at retail, and reflecting on that time he says the biggest change from when he started in the industry until now is helping farmers manage weed resistance.

“In 2008, we were in the heart of the RoundUp era—it was killing weeds, two shots and you’re done,” he says. “That’s when making chemical recommendations was easy. Now, weeds are harder to kill with multiple strains of resistance. It takes a lot more expertise in the crop protection space.”

Simultaneously, he watching for the next generational transition in agriculture, and how the scale of operations will change.

“Who’s our customer going to be in 10 years?” he says. “So far it’s been the same customer, they’ve just kept going longer. But in the next 10 years, 40% of the customer base will shift.”

As such, Sawyer says the co-op business will have to be ready to meet that new customer with the assets, services and products they need.

For 5 Star Co-op that list includes its introduction of the customer portal, a proprietary line of inputs, and financing programs.

“5 star Link has been a really successful platform for us as a digital enablement tool,” he says. “it helps our growers be able to access all aspects of their business with 5 star from their phone, from their ipad right there in the tractor cab.”

NexStar Crop Performance is the cooperative’s line of adjuvants, seed treatments and nutritional products.

“Looking at how the supply chain works, we were trying to find a way to add more value to the grower and one of the ways we landed on to add more value is make it more streamlined,” he says. “We have very good agronomists that they know what type of products they want to recommend. And we went out and started to source these products and develop manufacturer relationships.”

Sawyer says its NexStar line continues to grow as the agronomy team identifies proven products for their geography they can add.

The financing product was a result of the high interest rate ramp up in recent years.
“We were looking at what does the agronomy department need to do to better serve our customers, and the main thing on people’s minds were interest rates—it was a huge pain point,” he says. “Cooperatives are about leveraging the buying power of members to get better deals, and that’s what we were able to do with 5 Star Financing.”

Sawyer explains the program includes some programs that are 5% or 6% under prime rates.

“All of this is about giving farmers a great experience, which helps us get deeper into their operation and become more of a partner and work together to make their business better,” he says.