‘A New Chapter’ for Nutrien Opens with its Innovation Farm
March 31, 2025 
The leadership team at Nutrien Ag Solutions (from left): Billy Slade, Rob Clayton, Jeff Tarsi, Thaddeus Bates, Kent McDaniel, Paul Bonnett, and Rob Dunlop.
On March 20, Nutrien Ag Solutions held a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony at its newest Innovation Farm located just south of Champaign, IL. CropLife magazine was one of a handful of guests invited to attend this special event.
“This is a new chapter for us,” said Thaddeus Bates, Senior Manager, Applied Agronomy, at the ribbon-cutting. “It’s been a long time coming.”
The company originally purchased the 282-acre farm in 2019, and the onsite facility will host a 16-person team representing differentiated agronomic capabilities from Nutrien Ag Solutions. The building will serve as a hub to host events such as training, team meetings, and customer engagements.
In addition to the Champaign location, Nutrien Ag Solutions also has three other farms in its Innovation Farm Network. The other locations are in Selma, CA, Winterville, MS, and Owensboro, KY.
According to Jeff Tarsi, President, Global Retail, the first Innovation Farm was the one in Owensboro.
Nutrien Ag Solutions leadership and employees, suppliers, state legislators, community members, and agricultural media gathered on March 20, 2025, to celebrate the grand opening of the company’s new Innovation Farm in Champaign, IL. From left: Rob Clayton, Senior Vice President of North American Retail; Kent McDaniel, Cornbelt Region Manager; Jeff Tarsi, President, Global Retail; Thaddeus Bates, Senior Manager, Applied Agronomy; and Paul Bonnett, Senior Director, Nutrien Agronomy.
“This farm came to us several years ago, when we purchased an independent ag retailer in Kentucky that was already using this Innovation Farm,” said Tarsi. “We quickly saw the potential to use this kind of farm to test our crop protection, seed, adjuvants, and equipment lines for their effectiveness before bringing them to market.”
In particular, said Tarsi, the equipment component of the Innovation Farm in Champaign is probably the biggest difference from the first one in Owensboro. “Equipment has a much larger role in agriculture today,” he said. “When you are talking about ag equipment today, you are talking about much more than tillage. You are talking about data collection, data simulation, how you can compile data, those kinds of things. You are trying to take up to 20 different data points, all with a vision of precisely delivering a solution to a grower that will give him or her the best chance to win.”
Paul Bonnett, Senior Director, Nutrien Agronomy, agreed that ag tech equipment innovations – along with a few genetic ones – will be key to what Nutrien Ag Solutions is testing for its customers at its Champaign Innovation Farm.
“Drones, vision spraying, and short stature corn – all these things will fundamentally change the way farming is done going forward,” said Bonnett. “In my mind, I believe these will have as profound an impact on this industry as the introduction of genetically-modified crops did back in the mid-1990s.”
In addition, Bonnett also predicts another area of agriculture – soil health – will play a critical role in the future.
“We have three goals at the Innovation Farm – industry collaboration, agriculture education, and soil health and biology,” he said. “We like to think about soil health as the next big frontier for agronomy because it all starts with soil when it comes to yield.”
Rob Clayton, Senior Vice President of North American Retail, agreed that soil health will be increasingly important to the future of agriculture. “Soil health is going to be the next step in the evolution of agriculture,” said Clayton. “And that’s the difference this Innovation Farm will make for Nutrien. There are hundreds of promised ag solutions introduced every year. But here, we get to test those solutions so that they are farmer-ready. Furthermore, with four Innovation Farms across the country, we can demonstrate and validate the solutions for every major crop type in North America.”
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