Posted December 10, 2024 | By: Nutrien Ag Solutions

Nutrien Financial Area Manager Jordan Howe joins Agronomy for your Acres to share how his efforts support agronomy in the field.

Episode Transcript:

Farm Progress broadcast presents this Week in Agribusiness Serving America's most essential industry brought to you by Case IH solutions for every challenge, equipment for every farm. Case IH built by farmers. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us here for This Week in Agribusiness. I'm Mike Pearson. We begin this weekend with Agronomy for your Acres with our friends from Nutrien Ag Solutions.

Now ordinarily, we are talking agronomics and crop potential on Agronomy for your Acres, but with most acres in the country dormant this time of year, we're going to focus on something else equally important. Joining us is Jordan Howe, he is the Nutrien Financial Area Manager. And Jordan, thank you so much for speaking with us this weekend. Thank you, Mike.

Appreciate the time. Fill us in a little bit on Nutrien Ag Solutions’ financial offerings, what are you bringing to the table? Yeah, so we offer financial services to our grower customers of Nutrien Ag Solutions. We're an ag company and ag retailer, for Nutrien Ag Solutions so when we can partner and be able to offer financial services to the farmers, we believe with our agronomic expertise and then if we can bring the capital management expertise to the table, we can we can offer a lot of solutions for the farmers out there.

So, it's an interesting way to have finance working hand in glove with that agronomy, isn't it, Jordan? Yeah, no, absolutely, and that's what we pride ourselves on. We know how the farmers, based on their production needs and how they get paid as farmers, to be productive and to be sustainable and profitable. So, when we can offer the agronomic expertise with first in class products from the agronomic side, but then partner it with the best capital management solution to be able to match our growers’ cashflow needs, we believe it's a solution that can set ourselves apart, but most importantly, set our set our farmers up for success in the future.

That's what it's all about because farmers do face a number of unique challenges, financing is one of them. Jordan, what are you hearing from farmers on the ground about their financing challenges? Yeah, so with a little bit lower commodity prices, fortunately for a lot of our growers, they just took a big crop out of the field, but lower commodity prices than we've been used to with pretty stable input, input cost, volatility with interest rates, high interest rates for much of the 2024 growing season and really uncertainty of what's happening moving forward.

There are some concerns out there just based on when we're looking at the balance sheets and looking at a plan for 2025, we need to make sure we explore all of our options to set everybody up for success and hopefully relieve some of those stresses when it comes to how the cash flow is going to work moving into 2025.

Well, that's certainly true. So, let's talk in a little more detail about it. What can Nutrien Financial bring to the table to help farmers in this challenging environment? So that's where that's where we really use our relationships with our strategic suppliers, whether that be the chemical manufacturers or the seed manufacturers. We partner with them to be able to put together a program to be able to offer financing for their products and some of our products as well that will give them competitive, low-interest rate programs with due dates that are around harvest or following harvest, so that they can have a little more flexibility during the season to make the best decisions for those acres.  

And we never want people to be limited on the products. They can use the best products to be able to grow the most bushels or the most pounds. We know the name of the game is productivity so if we can assist and give a little flexibility in those purchases, it will alleviate some of those cash flow constraints during the season.

That's what we're striving for. That's what it's all about. Jordan, before we let you go, if we've got audience members who want to learn more about the offerings from Nutrien Financial, where would you send them? I'd send them to NutrienAgSolutions.ca. Find their nearest Nutrien Ag Solutions retailer. And that's the nice part is they have sort of a one stop shop at Nutrien Ag Solutions, our Nutrien Financial services are offered throughout all of our Nutrien Ag Solutions retail branches.

So, just partner up locally with your Crop Consultant at your local Nutrien Ag Solutions and you'll be good to go and we can get you more information. All right, turn to that trustworthy local expert right there at NutrienAgSolutions.ca. Jordan Howe, we appreciate you taking the time to talk with us this week. Thank you, Mike.