2021 Purdue Food and Agribusiness Executive Summit Featured Case Studies and Topics

CGB Enterprises

How does a company such as CGB Enterprises with domestic grain procurement focused on supplying its parent companies identify opportunities for continued growth in a volatile environment? Have the fundamentals of the grain industry shifted, and will the U.S. grain industry continue to be a key source in the global market? Are the relationship competencies that have given CGB an advantage in procurement still relevant to today’s U.S. farmer? Join Kevin Adams and Allan Gray as they discuss opportunities and challenges regarding global grain trade in the U.S. market, the future role of a U.S. domestic grain procurement company with its Japanese parent companies, and the potential to enhance growth in domestic markets.

Orbia

The agribusiness industry continues to search for new go-to-market strategies that bring value to farmer customers. In doing so, Bayer and its partner company of Bravium have joined forces to create Orbia, an ag marketplace. According to Bayer, several driving forces are behind this initiative, such as farm consolidation, increases in farm professionalization levels, generational changes and the growth of agricultural digitization.

Currently, 170,000 producers have accessed Orbia and have the ability to purchase inputs through the secure, digital platform using trusted distribution channels that feature a wide range of competitive products. Orbia’s model is based on a robust loyalty program that serves multiple agribusiness segments. This program allows producers to earn points that can be exchanged for over 700 products and services ranging from electronics to farm inputs to financial services.

As Orbia continues to grow, three main pillars are fundamental for this innovative concept to succeed. The first pillar deals with the marketplace. Here, Orbia has added multiple ag retailers to strengthen its e-commerce platform. The second pillar is the loyalty program. Orbia has already attracted many agribusiness companies to join the program and offered points to farmer customers to be redeemed for products and services. Now, Orbia must launch the third pillar, commodity trading, which would allow farmers to sell their production output in the platform in exchange for more points.

Join Orbia CEO Ivan Moreno as he, Luciano Castro and Scott Downey discuss Orbia’s growth plans and strategies as online marketplace competition intensifies.

CommoditAg/Topcon Agriculture

Distribution is a timely issue for companies in agriculture. Advances in information technology, communications and a more educated customer base have allowed agribusinesses more options when it comes to distributing products and services to end users. 

One of these advancements has been in the field of ecommerce. Despite its popularity in consumer marketing, online buying has experienced relatively slow adoption in agriculture. In an industry that has been built based on traditional brick and mortar retail locations, how can an online provider of farm products compete? CommoditAg, an ecommerce marketplace designed to sell farm products online, believes it has found the answer.

While farm input products such as seed and chemicals are sold online today, other more technical products continue to be sold through the retail channel — for example, precision agriculture components. While precision agriculture has been an option for farmers since the 1990’s, it has experienced very slow growth until recently as more barriers to entry are reduced and farmer acceptance and adoption increases. Topcon Agriculture, a company helping to build the market with its line of precision agriculture components traditionally sold through agriculture machinery dealers, has been there since the beginning.

While CommoditAg and Topcon are each focused on innovation, how can they work together to create an online distribution model for precision agriculture components? What issues and challenges do they face? What are key factors to success, and what impact does an omni-channel distribution strategy have on traditional retailers of Topcon products?

Join Justin Funk of Agri Studies as he chats with Brian Sorbe of Topcon Agriculture and John Demerly of CommoditAg regarding their development of an online marketplace for precision agriculture components, the journey and approach of bringing these two organizations together and the challenges and key success factors they have encountered along the way.

AgriTech Capital/Land O’Lakes/The Nature Conservancy/Cargill/Mars

Join Aidan Connolly of AgriTech Capital as he facilitates a debate around our current food supply and how we build resilience in a post-crises environment. This session is meant to be more than a discussion. It’s a sharing of candid thoughts and perspectives about the direction of a global, dynamic food system. Dig deep with experienced contributors and senior leaders in the classroom as we tackle a critical topic.

GoldenSun Insights

We watched as 2020 unleashed volatility on our food and agribusiness supply chains. In the fresh produce supply chain, disruptions impacted the seed industry, growers, shippers, wholesalers and retailers. While consumer behaviors and preferences also shifted during this time, shoppers continued to place importance on choosing grocery stores based on the availability of fresh foods — especially high-quality fruits and vegetables.

Recently, Allan Gray, executive director of Purdue University’s Center for Food and Agricultural Business, had the opportunity to speak with Jason Fuller and Randy Riley, co-owners of GoldenSun Insights, about challenges, opportunities, consumer trends and new technologies in the fresh produce market as a result of the past twelve months. Their conversation was captured here in our latest blog, Opportunities in the Fresh Produce Supply Chain.

GoldenSun Insights was founded on a deep understanding of what drives retail produce operations. Using this knowledge, GoldenSun supports clients in crafting solutions that elevate products and services beyond commodities to value-added positioning for retailers.

You can engage with Fuller and Riley at the 2021 Summit as they join us to discuss opportunities — post crisis — in the fresh produce supply chain.

Center for Food and Agricultural Business

Seeking to bring practical solutions to today’s toughest challenges, the Large Commercial Producer (LCP) Survey is the largest, longest-standing research project from the Purdue University Center for Food and Agricultural Business. The LCP Survey establishes a valuable understanding of commercial producers’ decision-making processes and how these processes have changed over time. Conclusions drawn from survey insights shed light on the agricultural supply chain and aid agribusiness professionals in better serving their customers and increasing their organization’s odds of success. For the 2021 iteration, 1,700 U.S. farmers representing 43 states were surveyed to bring you the opinions, preferences and results that matter most. During this session, Brady Brewer and Scott Downey will overview the top themes emerging from the 2021 survey.

Kent Corporation

As a historically solid-performing 90-year old company and its recent selection as a 2020 U.S. Best Managed Company by Deloitte Private and The Wall Street Journal, Kent Corporation was less than content when its recent 10-year revenue projection reflected a lower than optimal growth rate. With the acknowledgement that past performance does not guarantee future success now staring the company down, it became evident that Kent’s current course of action would not continue to generate the capital it desired.

So, how does a nine-decade old company with a diverse fleet of four divisions foster a culture of innovation? Rightfully, it extends its current products into new and compelling offerings and channels, while placing an intentional focus on innovation. To carry out these initiatives, Kent created an innovation approach with a dedicated team to work across business units. In doing so, critical questions must be answered to foster this new culture and generate the capital it desires for the next 90 years and beyond:

• Should innovation be embedded in the business, separate groups or both?
• Should Kent pursue collaboration outside of the company?
• If capital is limited, how will Kent reconcile issues and think about the future (particularly, an extremely unclear post-COVID future)?

Engage with Janet Sichterman, Kent Corporation’s executive vice president of enterprise innovation, as she and Pete Hammett discuss the challenges and complexities that come with fostering a culture of innovation in an organization that built its historical success on past practices.

Blue Nest Beef

This past year has taught us a great deal about our food supply chain and the way consumers buy. These learning and insights have left us preparing for how the future of our food supply and consumer behavior will look. One organization focused on the future of beef is Blue Nest Beef. Launched in 2019, Blue Nest Beef operates under an innovative business approach that reinvents animal agriculture at scale using cattle as its tool and birds as their guide.

Blue Nest Beef procures, processes and markets grass-fed beef produced on ranches The National Audubon Society has certified as “bird friendly” directly to consumers. This certification program focuses on getting ranchers to use intensive rotational grazing, which is important in restoring bird habitats and increasing bird populations. By using this model of regenerative agriculture in which farmers and consumers co-create a new and better food system that enhances the health of both people and the planet, Blue Nest Beef is able to use birds as a measure of success. This approach has allowed Blue Nest Beef to build a strong network of partnerships with cattle ranchers and expand its consumer base for shipped-direct product offerings, which resulted in exceptional sales growth of about 300% in 2020.

At the 2021 summit, you can join Russ Conser, Blue Nest Beef CEO, and Damien McLoughlin, Professor of Marketing in the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, as they consider how Blue Nest Beef’s branding, innovation, sustainability and supplier decisions can be executed in a way that provides sustainability and low prices to consumers who demand it, as well as farmers who often view sustainability as a cost. They’ll unpack the future of beef and reimagine the industry segment.

Center for Food and Agricultural Business

It will have been an intense three days of strategic conversations. As we wrap-up the Purdue Food and Agribusiness Executive Summit, Allan Gray and Marcos Fava Neves will lead the group through a discussion summarizing key points. Complete this experience by outlining your take-aways and action steps.