Posted March 8, 2022 | By: Nutrien Ag Solutions

Sustainability, By the People and For the People of the Agriculture Industry, with David Elser

There's a danger lurking in the conversation happening around sustainability, according to Nutrien Ag Solutions Senior VP North America David Elser.

If we become too tunnel-vision focused on one metric or goal in our sustainability discussion, he says we run the risk of sustainability becoming a "selfish" proposition.

David has the perspective of having worked in sustainability at a field level, with agronomists, and from the big picture perspective.

So in this episode, we discuss how the sustainability conversation has evolved, and how it needs to continue to evolve, in order to broaden the definition and keep people front and center.

Plus, David explains why adapting to the unexpected is going to be paramount in 2023. He fills us in on the latest from Nutrien Ag Solutions retail operations, where final preparations are underway to distribute the products needed to support the planting season, and says we're ready to deliver once again in 2023.

Episode Transcript

David Elser:

The word sustainability is I think loosely used in many different arenas, and our customers have been working to be sustainable, their entire farming careers. And quite frankly, I believe moving forward, sustainability would become our business because if you're not being sustainable, you're not in business.

Dusty Weis:

Welcome to The Future. Faster. A sustainable agriculture podcast by Nutrien Ag Solutions with our very own Tom Daniel, Director of North America Retail and Grower Sustainable Ag, and Dr. Sally Flis, Senior Manager, North America's Sustainable Ag in Carbon. 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, we're joined by David Elser, Senior Vice President Retail North America at Nutrien Ag Solutions, to learn about how the sustainability conversation has evolved and how it needs to continue to evolve in order to keep people front and center. David has the perspective of having worked at a field level with agronomists and the sustainability big picture, and he says, "Adapting to the unexpected is going to be paramount in 2023." But if you haven't yet, make sure you're subscribed to this podcast in your favorite app. Also, make sure to 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, and Tom and Sally, carbon and carbon reduction is a major part of what we're doing in sustainability. It's certainly been something that we've talked a lot about here, but it's not the only part of that puzzle. And today we're hoping to shift that conversation to a little bit more of a holistic view. What do we mean by that, Sally?

Sally Flis:

Yeah, thanks, Dusty. A lot of what we focused on the last two years is really trying to get this end-to-end process of carbon credits from the practices happening in the field, all the way to a third party buyer downstream for good ag practices happening with the growers and crop consultants that we're working with. But what we see and hear in both the downstream partnership side of things and from our growers and crop consultants in the field is that carbon is really such a small part of what we can be talking about with sustainability, practices we can be working with growers on and the reporting that we can do for those companies. Tom, I think a great example of this is the work we're doing with traceability where we're really looking at a wide array score kind of approach for those growers and not focusing solely on are we meeting the requirements of a carbon registry?

Tom Daniel:

Yeah, when you start talking about traceability, we're really looking at tracking an overall crop performance with different sustainability metrics, so it's not just about carbon, it's a much broader subject matter where we're looking at quality of the crop. Traceability allows you to have consistency in the product that's being delivered to the consumer, and then the consumer has the ability to choose to purchase that product on a consumer shelf and make a decision as to whether or not he sees value in that process.

And so today we think there is value there. We think there's ultimately going to be an opportunity for traceability to be part of that offering within Nutrien, where we can actually help growers find a revenue source outside of just a carbon piece. But now Sally, when I say that carbon's going to still be a big portion of that, but maybe payment wise, not as big a portion, but it will still be part of that because some of the metrics that we want to track on these different acres will include carbon, just like water efficiency and all the other different environmental measurements we want to push.

Sally Flis:

For sure. One of the things we definitely learned from the last two years is how do we make more of these programs work together so that there's a streamlined message to the crop consultant and to the grower in the field of what we're really looking to do. I really feel like in 2022, we fell into the trap of wanting to share as much about everything we were doing as we could, and we just only raised confusion in the field of what we were doing and why we were doing it and how the programs work instead of trying to just bring forward a simple offer and then working within our sustainability teams on the backside, figuring out what is the opportunity for carbon or for other offsets or insets or water quality or is it a traceability acre?

So really getting to the point a little bit in the 2023 cropping season, but for sure for the 2024 cropping season, where the grower just goes in signs up in Agrible and then the programs that are available are put in front of them and that we really are going out with this approach of, we want to measure the baseline of what's happening and we can't get you into any program without data collection. And so let's get your data collected. Let's hopefully be able to help working with partners, find a small incentive for that data collection alone, and then we can report on almost anything we want or work with the crop consultants and the growers to figure out what the best programs are for them. I would guess you'd agree, Tom, but I feel like what we did a lot of in the last two years was us trying to pick programs and take them to the field and we learned a lot, but really wanting to shift this year to getting that involvement of the field in program design.

Tom Daniel:

Yeah, I would totally agree with that, Sally. And I think you would agree too that digital data being put into the system allows a grower then to see access to multiple different programs that may be available in his geography, but without that data set, there's nothing to work off of. And what we did in the past is we worked with maybe providing a specific program for a certain geography, but at the same time, after we did that, we went and looked for growers within that geography that participate.

The better approach to that, that we'd like to get to in the future is where growers automatically just have their information put into an Agrible type program, and then we have the opportunity after that data is in, to look for multiple different revenue opportunities that may exist in that area. And if we have the data, then we can look at carbon, we can look at consumer demand driven programs. There's multiple different things that we can work with, but if we don't have the data in some digital system that we can track it to, we don't have much to work off of. So would you agree that the data piece and growers being willing to participate in a digital platform are going to be a key component to move forward?

Sally Flis:

I would agree, Tom and I think the other piece that brings value back there is when we have that data collected and we can share back with that grower and crop consultant pair where their opportunities are for implementing different or new sustainability practices or products or programs, then it helps drive that relationship. It helps drive sustainability on the ground and it helps add to that conversation, which is what we've been trying to do with the programs as we've been designing them. I think you've seen that in some of the programs this year as we get some of these reports back in being able to summarize what worked and what didn't as you go back out to growers in the South.

Dusty Weis:

Now, Tom and Sally, we've touched a few times here about how important it is to get data flowing into the system here, but can you remind me again, what from a grower's standpoint goes into feeding data into the system and why is that so important for the sustainability end of things here?

Tom Daniel:

Dusty, when we talk about what data goes into the system, it's really tied to what we call field story. So everything that happens in that particular field, every pass of a piece of equipment, every applied product on that field, all of it's recorded into a database that allows us then to look at all of that information and determine what is going to be the best path forward for that grower. And Sally, when we talk about that data, it's just about everything that happens in that field in a given time. And it's not that the grower actually has to just enter the data into the system, he can actually import it from multiple different systems to help provide part of those pieces. And Sally, I would say it's more around we need to know from a historical basis what's happened in that field during a cropping season so that we can look for opportunities for the grower.

Sally Flis:

Yeah, I think you get on a couple of different things, Tom, that are important, its, we can get any type of record keeping system a grower has, Agrible can accommodate. So if you're writing it down in a notebook, we've got our customer success team that can help you navigate getting an Agrible account set up, getting the data entered where it needs to be so you can start having that digital record.

Two, we're able to connect into a couple of the farm management software platforms and pull out at least shape files and sometimes some of the field events that may be recorded in that farm management software. But that baseline piece that you mentioned at the end is super important, right? As we get more data on a field entered into Agrible, we can help the grower and crop consultant figure out what is that next best practice to implement there that's going to give them the best return, whether it's from a program payment side or it's really what we're shooting for, that trifecta of better return and investment, better yield and a program payment at the same time, so just having the data in the system helps us be able to provide those insights back.

Tom Daniel:

And Sally, it also helps our agronomy team when they have that data and they understand what they're driving for, we always talk about our whole acre solutions and that's where we're driving and helping our grower reach a certain outcome off that acre. It could be carbon related or water quality related or erosion protection. There's multiple different outcomes we could solve for, but by having that data and having it where we can analyze it and look through it, it gives the agronomists a better opportunity to go and actually visit with the grower and look for how do we get to a measured outcome that we're trying to move to.

Dusty Weis:

Well and Tom, I think from a grower perspective as well, it certainly makes it easier from the field level to see where your efforts fit into that big sustainability picture, and that's a strong selling point as well. But someone who we know is expert in taking things from the field level to the macro level is David Elser, the Senior Vice President of Retail North America at Nutrien Ag Solutions. He joined us a little more than a year ago and he's going to join us again coming up here in a moment 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 David Elser, Senior Vice President Retail North America at Nutrien Ag Solutions. David, thanks for joining us again.

David Elser:

It's great to be here today with you, Dusty. Sally, Tom.

Dusty Weis:

It's great to have you back. And of course, we pointed out the distinction here that you are our first return guest on the Future. Faster., so another entry on that already very broad, very deep resume of yours. But it's been about a year since your last appearance on the podcast. Can you catch us up, give us a general update on where North America Retail stands at this point?

David Elser:

Yeah, Dusty, and it was an honor to be here a year ago with this group, and it's good to be asked to be back, and it's been an amazing year. You think about 2022. We started off the year with a number of supply chain challenges and I think at last year's podcast we talked about 2022 being the year of the agronomist, where we were going to have to make on the farm sort of real time decisions relative to either weed management, disease management, or even seed decisions. And 2022 ended up to be a great year for our producers. Commodity prices held strong as well as our people. And normally what we say around here is we take care of our people and we take care of our customers, most everything usually gets taken care of, and 2022 was definitely a year that we saw that and obviously move it into '23.

There are a number of other opportunities for us, but we're real proud of the teams that serve our customers every day. It's an honor and privilege over the last year to be here with Nutrien Ag Solutions focused on our customers, focused on our people and people like Sally and Tom on our team, working on sustainability and helping us think about the future. I'd say Dusty, that's one thing in '22, we spent a lot of time on is thinking about where the future is headed towards and how we're going to get there and how we're going to stay focused on our customers getting there.

Sally Flis:

David, you were appointed December 2021 to the Senior Vice President for Retail of North America with Nutrien Ag Solutions. Over that year, what are some of the key learnings that you've had from being in this role, being in the field and getting to travel around?

David Elser:

Sally, it's a really good question. I always believe feedback is a gift, both receiving and giving it, but also being willing to learn and get better every day. And to your point, my first year in the role, it's been a real learning experience. First and foremost, getting to learn a lot more about our people because we are in a major people business. Every day, our people are interacting with our customers and getting a chance to travel around all of North America, I'm interacting with our people, getting a better understanding of their business, the crops that they serve and the customers they serve.

And then secondly, really just getting to learn from our customers, whether it's unique local events. Like this last year, we had a chance to do a major crop tour this past summer and visit in real time, how crops were doing at that given time of the year, but also how we could do better going forward, your in crop learning about agronomically, what you were doing for this season, and how you would think about changing that going forward.

And that's been a great insight because a lot of times, although we think we have the ability to know what our customers want, the best thing to do is go out and visit with customers and learn what they need. And once you get that good understanding of what they need, you can better shape either your strategies or tactics going forward. But first and foremost, was just continuing learning from our people, getting a chance to connect with our customers, Sally.

And I think the last thing is, although I already probably knew this, it was just further solidifying what we all know, that particularly us have growing up in agriculture, agriculture's an amazing career to be in, as well as working here at Nutrien Ag Solutions as serving customers all around North America. We're literally in every crop, every state, every province of North America, and getting a chance to serve our customers and serve their needs is a huge honor and privilege.

Tom Daniel:

So David, as you've traveled around this last year, especially, the discussion around sustainability continues to pop up all the time, whether it's at our corporate office or it's at our retail organization. We've got a lot of retail divisions that are very focused on projects around sustainability today. But how have you seen that discussion of sustainability evolve with not only our retail employees, but our grower customers also?

David Elser:

Yeah, Tom, the word sustainability is loosely used, in many different arenas in many different conversations. But what I'm most proud of around here is we're really open to the conversation around sustainability, whether it's downstream and certain conversations we're having with downstream players, but also more importantly, the conversations with our customers, because I think our customers have been working to be sustainable, their entire farming careers. And quite frankly, as I said a year ago on this podcast, I believe moving forward, sustainability would become our business because if you're not being sustainable, you're not in business. And so we've just got to keep looking to shape what we mean by it, as well as how we're going to continue to work with our customers to better bring them what I call outcome-based, agronomic solutions that focus on a higher ROI for them, as well as meeting the downstream potential needs of the future.

And we've got a couple of really powerful projects going on right now in the business that are aligning end-to-end, but also it's aligning the opportunity to learn a lot. For me, sustainability, Tom, is near and dear to my heart. I think about the resource concerns that we deal with every day. There's the substantial water challenge that exists, although we weren't expecting to get snow storms this time of year, and we're getting some colder weather than we expect right now. But also I just think about farmer's legacy on the farm, the importance of them being sustainable not only for their business but for their families. And in many cases, we're dealing with long-term family farms that have been in the business for a long time. And so them being committed to a sustainable future is at the heart of what they do all the time. Tom, I think we're in a great spot as a North American retailer, to have the conversation not only downstream, but also with our customers to understand how they're thinking about it and us to take a leadership role on the solutions we're bringing.

Dusty Weis:

David, this conversation really dovetails in nicely with what we were talking about in the first segment of the podcast here, which is how there's a tendency sometimes to get tunnel vision when it comes to the term sustainability and just focus on one thing or one metric. What would you say are the dangers of allowing that definition of sustainability to get too focused on one thing?

David Elser:

Yeah, I think anytime, Dusty, you get too focused on one thing, a lot of times, whatever that one thing is, ends up being quite selfish to whoever or whatever the organization is that's so tunnel focused on it. That's why I think we've got to keep a real broad open mindset around the word itself, continuing to look at how we define it. At Nutrien Ag Solutions, we've been working heavily, again with our own customers, but also downstream to better understand what that means, focused on certain topics like water, certain topics like overall farm resources. And so, keeping it wide open and a bit broad, Dusty, I think it’s really important. Otherwise, it just ends up being really narrow or selfish to the individual definition that you're trying to come up with.

Sally Flis:

David, you mentioned resources or resource concerns a couple of times, and I know Tom and I try and re-shift the conversation around sustainability and how do we get a grower to implement a practice in the field based around what is that real resource concern. After your year out in the field and getting to some of these field tours, what do you see as the Nutrien Ag Solutions resource concern to getting more sustainability practices and measurement on the ground, and what have you seen as those grower resource concerns, as you've interacted in the field?

David Elser:

Yeah, Sally, I think that particularly if you start with the customer first. There isn't customers I haven't met that is not concerned about resources as a whole, whether you're in corn country where they may be concerned about water resources or you're in another part of corn growing country where there's too much water. And what it comes down to is available resources to not only utilize to raise the crop, whether that's inputs or natural resources, but also the resources of human capital. And so, when I think about how we get better connected to the customer and how we get better connected to the resources they have, and we have, it's all about the return on investment. And at the end of the day, if we have a chance to help a customer have a greater return on their investment, our chance is to have a long-term relationship there, are greater than not.

And I just think about for ourselves a lot of times, whether it's a resource concern or even in the context of sustainability, what could be a really good idea in a very local micro market, if it can't be scalable across many markets or acres, it has a hard time creating that common approach and therefore, you get to a resource concern of time and effort. And so I think Sally, resources as a whole, whether it's time, whether it's a natural resource or its, how do I think about return on investment, is extremely important. And the good news in the relationships we have with our customers and the opportunities we have to continue to build on those relationships to our customers, because we're in all crops, in all states and all provinces across North America, it really gives us a chance to look for those unique opportunities locally and to begin to look to scale them across multiple areas or multiple crops.

Tom Daniel:

David, I was on a call the other day with some relatively large downstream CPGs and some others that are major players in the industry. It was curious that when we were on that call, their main focus was around creating change at the farm level, whether it be the discussion around biodiversity, adding more crops into a particular rotation, or whether it be around using cover crops or whatever was going to create that biodiversity field for the farm. But one of the things that I brought up on that call, and it caused everybody to take a pause is that if there's not economic sustainability around practice change, then we can ask a grower to make changes that are going to adversely affect his crop.

And I'll give you an example. You're an Iowa man and you still have farmland in Iowa. Number one crop that you'll see in Iowa, obviously it's probably going to be corn. And the discussion was, how do we get growers to get away from a corn after corn after corn rotation? Well, the reason they're doing that today is because it's economically sustainable for them to do that. I think that's one of the key things that we as a company have to be focused on, the economic sustainability for the grower long term.

David Elser:

Yeah, I think Tom, you hit it head on, and I think it's, again, a little bit back to the question Dusty asked around the word sustainability and the narrowness of it. And if you don't include the return on investment or the economics side of it, it becomes selfish to one side or the other. And if it's selfish to the downstream CPG player that you're talking to, you make it an interesting uptake for one or two years, but sooner or later the next idea that comes around, will start to occupy that space.

I think the good news, Tom, is that just like you said, you clearly understand that we've got some 14,000 employees in North America at Nutrien Ag Solutions that understands that we're here to help serve our customers, to bring forward better agronomic solutions to help them have a greater ROI, whether it's corn on corn on corn in Iowa and Illinois, or it's corn soybean rotation, or it's an implementation of cover crops. And in some parts of our major row crop growing areas, cover crops have a really good economical benefit, and in some areas it doesn't. And so we're going to have to work to figure out what's best for those local growing regions and our customers. That's what we're here to do.

And so if we do that well for our customers, I think it builds credibility with the downstream CPGs that says when they come forward with a specific ask, we can help shape it and then we can help actually go execute on it because we're able to work with our customers, we've built the trust with our customers, and that's first and foremost, Tom. If the economics don't work, well, the first thing is the pencil won't be sharp enough. And then the second thing is we'll lose trust and credibility, which that's when things really start to come off the track. We're here to keep building trust with our customers. We're here to keep looking for opportunities for them, and I think we're in a really good position with our customers to help shape the future, some of those conversations you're having Tom downstream. And I think we're seeing that from time to time.

Sally Flis:

David, the 2023 growing season is underway, crops are being planted in the South already. What are some of the challenges we're seeing in the field and do we still have impacts of these international markets that are so out of whack in our retail supply chain and in the prices growers might see this year?

David Elser:

Yeah, Sally, if I think about a year ago sitting here with you all the supply chain challenge was one that was top of mind with everyone. We did call it the year of the agronomist, meaning 2022 was going to require us to think differently from time to time on how we could best serve our customers and work with them to maximize their return on investment for their given crop because maybe not all the perfect products were in our hand at that time when we needed to pull the trigger to do something. And so, I'm just super proud of our crop consultants out there and the relationships with our customers, and we don't take any of that for granted because we journeyed through 2022 with great success, obviously there were always challenges. We had a really good year working with our customers, solving for their problems on the farm.

Now if you think about moving into '23, because we practiced all those given skills a year ago, we helped farmers get to where they needed to get to, I feel really good about going into this season. Having more supply on hand ready to help serve our customers when they decided to get to the field, I would say, although we're not behind, it feels a little bit like it because of some of the different weather patterns we've been having across the entire North American region. As you said in your question, we're planting corn in Texas. We got a little bit of activity going on in Florida, a little bit through the mid-range of Tennessee and Kentucky. But outside of that, it's pretty slow. And so right now we're still heavily in the preparation phase to get ready for when farmers farm. We'll be there for them to get there, and I will guarantee you, we'll be there to be ready to serve our customers when they're ready to go.

And so because of the massive dress rehearsal we had a year ago through 2022, I feel like we're in a great place, Sally, for '23, having the right supplies in the right place, and by all means, planning with our farmers became a, I think a greater skill that we've practiced over last year and we've been honing in on, so the better chance we have to plan, the better off we'll be. I feel really good. We just had a meeting this morning talking about how our inventories look, talking about where we are and things are in position, and quite frankly, we're just ready to get going. We'd like to be farming soon is where we'd like to be.

Sally Flis:

David, as I watched this coverage of the train derailment in Ohio and knowing how much of what we move both as our product and as farmer's product in rail, are you hearing anything that we could start to have even more challenges with rail transportation because of that accident in Ohio, or are there any concerns or pre-planning going around any rail movement? Because my concern having come from my time working in a trade industry group is, there's going to be all kinds of crazy suggested regulations around how many cars we can have of what on a train and some of that could impact the way we move things over the next six months.

David Elser:

Well, Sally, if you started with the pandemic and you started to add up all the historical events that happened that we weren't typically used to, up and through to now, including what went on in Ohio here recently, which was a scary situation, and/or a year ago when the Mississippi River was at an all time low and you weren't able to get barge traffic appropriately through there, or when Texas froze over here a few years back, there's just a number of things that are coming at us that we haven't been used to. Even just a year ago, we had the Ukrainian conflict that was kicked off, which in many ways was something we hadn't experienced particularly with the strength that that country had relative to crop production of cereals and corn. I think what we're learning from all this is, we should always be planning and preparing for what we can control and always be collaborating heavily with partners to better understand how we can solve for problems when such problems come up.

And I think whether it's the waterways or the railways or the truck ways, goods across this country have to move, whether it's for ourselves or to the ports to be exported. And so for us, because we have such a strong fleet of both trucks and ag equipment to help serve our customers, where we feel really good about being prepared for anything that's thrown at us, is we're here to help support our customer, at the end of the day.

And whether it's the supply chain challenges of a year ago or anything that's coming up in near future that could be unexpected, we're here for our customers and we're getting prepared for them here and now. And that's the unique thing about Nutrien Ag Solutions that both for our people and for our customers, we just really feel like if we work hard to stay customer focused, we worked hard to keep bringing agronomic solutions to them, and we work hard to take care of our people and have the right products in the right place, there's really no challenge that we can't overcome. We just hope through all that, that whether it's railway incident in Ohio or it's our people working with our customers or our customers themselves, that everybody gets home safe every night, because if we focus on getting everybody home safe every night, we'll get it done. It may not be perfect, and it may not be on a normal track, but we'll get it done.

Dusty Weis:

Well, David, I've got to say when we talked to you last year, probably the biggest piece of wisdom that you dropped was calling 2022, the year of the agronomist. You referenced that a little bit ago, and I'd say if 2022 was a dart board, right in the middle there with that one. We talked to you in January that year. I don't think we certainly realized everything that 2022 was going to bring us, but here we are. It's early in 2023 and once again, we don't know what's on the way. What's your prediction for this year? What would you call 2023?

David Elser:

Well, it's a really good question. And 2022 being the year of the agronomist was all underpinned as a result of what we felt like were supply chain challenges coming in. And I think what we learned through all of that is that the relationship between our crop consultant or our agronomist and the customer is even more important. And so I believe in 2023, what we're going to see is the need for continued focus on this being a people business. There isn't a day that doesn't go by that our crop consultant alongside our customer base isn't looking to solve for some unique challenge or opportunity.

Whether it's us working downstream with CPGs, as Tom said earlier, or it's then us working with our customers to help bring forward the right economic solutions. It's going to be the year of taking care of our people, it's going to be the year of taking care of our customer. And if we do that well, most everything will get taken care of.

Dusty Weis:

The year of people power, I think there's something to that. David Elser from Nutrien Ag Solutions, thank you so much once again for joining us on this episode of The Future. Faster. That is going to conclude this edition of The Future. Faster. The Pursuit of Sustainable Success with Nutrien Ag Solutions. New episodes arrive every month, 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 Mackey Mikunda. 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.

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