Driving down costs through budget-focused agronomy

From family ranch to independent agronomy provider

Andrew Jensen is a fifth-generation farmer in Central California, growing up on a ranch that farms walnuts, almonds, alfalfa, corn, oats and. Walnuts are a strong focus of the family operation where they've now become vertically integrated by growing, hulling, processing and distributing them. While completing his agricultural degree at Cal Poly, Andrew started working as an agricultural retailer, writing recommendations and selling crop inputs to growers.

Because of this job, Andrew started to pay closer attention to what was happening on his family ranch, where a couple of things immediately stood out for him: “At the company where I worked, we were typically writing recommendations or selling what we had on the shelf and that didn't feel super good. And then simultaneously on our own ranch, I was seeing recommendations for, say, an aggressive weed spray on a thousand acres that didn't even need a weed spray. And so those two problems of not writing field specific recommendations and not doing what was best financially for the grower, didn't sit well with me.”

As soon as Andrew obtained his degree, he launched Crop Syndicate in 2019. Together with providing solid agronomic advice, Andrew started by pooling his family's buying power with neighbouring growers, uncovering significant savings simply by tracking costs per acre and comparing suppliers. “The best recommendation should be the cheapest recommendation that gets the job done,” Andrew says. “And you can't know that without seeing dollars per acre on your recommendation.” After seeing seasonal plans created in Agworld by one of his mentors, Andrew quickly made the decision to adopt Agworld into Crop Syndicate.

Transparent Recommendations that build trust

Fast forward to today, and Crop Syndicate provides full-service agronomy, irrigation, nutrition, and pest control advice, along with independent sourcing of crop inputs. About 70% of their acreage is almonds, but they also work with walnuts, pistachios, alfalfa, corn, and grapes. By separating product sales from agronomy services, Andrew ensures his team stays unbiased. “Our agronomists are only compensated for acres under service, not for selling products,” he explains. “If a grower finds something cheaper that's great, we want them to win.”

Andrew continues: “It really is remarkable to see the amount of money that growers can save, not just by shopping around, but being aware of how much something costs per acre. To help them understand these costs, every recommendation we provide includes a cost column, enabling growers to see exactly how much a spray or fertilizer program will cost before it's applied. The biggest difference to the process is that we're able to have a conversation about costs before the application happens, not after.”

Prior to using Agworld, Andrew was using different software, but it did not give him a clear grasp of the costs association he says: “I didn't know how much this material costs or how much this application costs. A lot of times I didn't even really know the full implications of a recommendation without that cost per acre column. And that was initially what really drew us to using the Agworld platform, not just internally for tracking cost per acre, per field, but also for our growers to be able to see, okay, when they get a recommendation, not get a surprise on their bill that they know this product costs this much. If a grower gets agronomic advice from Crop Syndicate and buys their inputs through us as well, their bill will exactly match the cost column on their recommendation, which is huge in building trust.”

Scaling a team with Agworld

As Crop Syndicate grew from a one-man operation to a nine-person team, Agworld's structure helped maintain consistency. Templates let junior agronomists start with proven recommendations, while mobile access enables data capture and scouting in the field. “There's a learning curve, but Agworld's templates shorten it,” Andrew notes. “It's easier for new team members to write good recommendations quickly because we are really passionate about having a solid template in Agworld for every situation to at least build off of. When I first started writing recommendations, I remember agonising over every detail not knowing what was normal. The ability for one of our junior agronomists to say, okay, this field here needs a strip spray, they can go into Agworld, find the most current template for a basic strip spray and build off of that, really helps get them up to speed quickly.”

While growing the team at Crop Syndicate, the team at Agworld has been an important part of supporting his business, Andrew says: “I've really enjoyed working with the Agworld team, they've been great in helping with getting new colleagues up and running or any issues we might have. And I do also have to give credit for Agworld being responsive to customer feedback, which is very important for us with every company we work with.”

Andrew sums it up with: “For us, Agworld is our all-in-one location for agronomy; we have our reporting, our budgeting, and our planning all in the same spot. Where Agworld helps us differentiate ourselves from other providers in the market, is that it helps us prove to our growers that we care about how much these recommendations cost them, and that we are continuously going to write the best recommendation possible for them in their unique situation.”