CropLife Retail Week: AI Robotics, Drones, and 50 Years of Ag Retail Innovation

In this episode, CropLife Editor Eric Sfiligoj talks with Jeff Freeman, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for Marion Ag Service based in St. Paul, OR, to discuss how the company has grown into a unique, customer-focused independent retailer. Freeman shares key insights on how cutting-edge technologies such as AI spot-spraying, autonomous field robotics, and gene editing are changing the industry. He also discusses navigating global fertilizer supply disruptions, managing economic risks, and preparing internal teams for the 2027 growing season.

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*Below is a partial and edited transcript:

Eric Sfiligoj

Hello. Welcome to another edition of Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj with the CropLife Media Group, here with a special guest this week, Jeff Freeman from Marion Ag Service in Oregon. Jeff, how are you doing?

Jeff Freeman

I’m great. Eighty degrees, no humidity, but looking great out there.

Eric Sfiligoj

I was going to say, I’ve been to the Pacific Northwest several times, and I know anybody who lives out there and then comes east of the Mississippi is like, “Wow, that humidity thing, it’s special.” So, yeah, I envy you guys out there because you don’t have to deal with it much at all.

So, hey, if you could, Jeff, for the folks who might not know about Marion Ag Service, give us a little background on the company and, of course, yourself. And then we’ll talk a little bit about, I guess, a special event or a special year that the company is having here in 2026.

Jeff Freeman

Yeah. So, my name is Jeff Freeman. I lead the business development efforts at Marion Ag Service and have been here 10 years.

Marion Ag is an ag retailer, maybe a little bit of a different color when it comes to the diversity of things we do. And that diversity, I think, really stems from the marketplace that we’re in.

So, the Willamette Valley of Oregon, the grass seed capital of the world, has a lot of diversity in the market. So many people don’t know that our number one agricultural commodity by value is nursery crops, nursery and greenhouse.

Yeah, okay. That’s unique. And, you know, very, very little corn, no soybeans, a lot of grass seed, and some diversified products like hazelnuts.

Marion Ag was started and is still owned independently, run by Bob Hockett. A number of people have a lot of long tenure and have been here. Tom Wimmer, who’s acted as the manager for many years, has been here over 45 years, I think, now.

So, a lot of history and diversity. Bob started the business with another handful of growers. He had more ideas than they were willing to jump at, so Bob pretty quickly, after a few years, bought them out and started the business, really, in the services side: storing, drying, field-applied lime, and doing corn topping.

So, crops have changed and migrated through the years, and Marion Ag does a really good job of kind of keeping their eye on the customer and talking with the customer to find out what the needs are. So, that’s how we focus on our business: What are the customer needs?

Eric Sfiligoj

All right. Very good. And again, this year is the company’s 50th anniversary. So, how has the company been celebrating that milestone?

Jeff Freeman

Yeah, I think, you know, obviously being recognized in the industry has been really rewarding. But I think it’s really around celebrating with our teammates.

You know, like I said, I have a lot of pride in a guy like Colin Wimmer, who’s been around 40-plus years. And, you know, I’m kind of a little bit longer in the tooth than some of the newer employees.

But that pride, longevity of running an independent business, and having the connections with our customers and relationships with their customers—we do—that’s what we like to celebrate.

We kind of do it every day. But when you get to a milestone like 50, it’s pretty special.

Eric Sfiligoj

Yeah, I agree. And I know for those folks who want to know more about Marion Ag Service, CropLife did an article recently that was posted online talking about the company, so you could check that at CropLife.

And again, Jeff, you said you’ve been with the business now for about a decade, 10 years or so. Originally, I was going to ask you, over the 50-year lifespan of Marion, what was the most important development that you’ve witnessed for ag retailers?

But I mean, I just think more on your timescale, the last 10 years. What’s been the most significant difference between when you started with Marion and today, and why is that important?

Jeff Freeman

Yeah, I’d probably tie it back to my entire career because I grew up on a grass seed farm about 30 miles away from here, from Marion. Marion was a provider of ours, so I always had a connection to Marion Ag.

But I think one of the things we see in the market is, anytime we have change in the market, it’s really been around breeding advancements and maybe technology.

And many times we think about that in corn and soybeans and crops like that where they’re maybe transgenic. But, you know, we’ve seen changes in our marketplace, in the hazelnut industry, for instance. And that was born out of advanced breeding out of Oregon State University and contending with Eastern filbert blight and creating varieties that were resistant.

So, that business has grown considerably in the last decade or 15 years because of genetics.

Eric Sfiligoj

Okay. It’s interesting you bring that up. I did have a question about ag technology and adoption in the marketplace.

I know I’ve spent the better part of the summer months here in the Midwest talking with ag retailers that mostly do row crops, obviously corn, soybeans, cotton. And they’ve been talking about all types of technology.

But in particular, two things they talked about are artificial intelligence, AI, and, of course, drone use—not necessarily for scouting, but for application work.

Are those the same technologies we’re seeing in Oregon, or are they different for various reasons because you get a different crop mix?

Jeff Freeman

Yeah, I think when it comes to drones, because we have a lot of wet ground at times during the off-season, you end up with challenges to get out and treat and spray crops.

So, I think there’s a number of retailers that have jumped on the bandwagon to provide those services.

And, you know, you can kind of go bleeding edge, leading edge, and then jump in when it feels a little more safe. We haven’t been focused on custom applications, so we let some of those others do it and partner with folks that can do it.

So, it’s become a piece of the market. I think technology in the next two years is just going to go bananas because of being able to bring together AI and robotics.

We’re already seeing it with some specialized equipment in our grass seed markets, where they’re selectively spot-spraying on the fly with AI. And I think there’s all sorts of applications that stem out of that movement.

You know, Boston Dynamics has a partnership with Syngenta where they’re looking at a robot dog, and you start thinking about being able to utilize that not just to scout, but actually take action on something in the field, whether that’s spot-spraying or whatever.

No, I think the combination of robotics or machinery, plus AI, is going to move the needle on some things.

Eric Sfiligoj

Interesting. Okay. Well, I did have a question for you also because, again, I see that technology adoption as one of the opportunities that ag retailers and agriculture in general are going to have moving through ’26 and on into ’27.

But, I mean, what other market opportunities do you see out there, and how is Marion Ag going to try to take advantage of those?

Jeff Freeman

Yeah. Like I said, we’re a bit different. We have traditional ag retail calling on the crops that surround us. We’ve been in professional horticulture, which is the nursery business, and a large portion of our business is wholesale dry fertilizer that we package and send all over the West.

So, like I said, we’re pretty diversified. We’re pretty different.

But, you know, I think the opportunities lie in the advancement of technology. And I look at some of the new movements and advanced breeding, genetic editing, if you want to summarize it, and applying it to some of these specialty crops and moving it out of just big crops that can pay for transgenic.

I think we’ve got a really unique set of resources in this market.

I’m excited about what we can do with grass and hazelnuts and just keep moving the needle on improving the crops.

And so, I think some of the value capture is going to come out of genetics and maybe move away from just a pure, you know, our margin capture is based on the service we provide out in the field making recommendations.

And so, we get rewarded from a sale of a fungicide, for instance. I think some of those things are going to change pretty quickly with genetics being able to apply to smaller-scale crops.

Eric Sfiligoj

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So, flipping that question on its head, then, I mean, market challenges—you mentioned fertilizer, and Marion Ag does a lot with fertilizer. And I know we’ve been talking in several videos over the last few months about the challenges that we’ve seen when it comes to fertilizer logistics and supply situations.

Of course, the whole Iranian conflict is not helping things.

Tell me a little bit about some of the challenges that Marion’s had to deal with and how you were managing those.

Jeff Freeman

Yeah, I think prior to COVID, or when COVID happened until now, just count the number of Black Swan events that have happened. There’s a lot of them.

So, you know, it’s how much risk you’re willing to impart on your business to take positions on inventory. What pattern to buy in so that, you know, you’re able to share the risk with your grower and communicate with your grower on what the challenges are.

Yeah, that’s a big one in the grand scheme of things. We try to keep our eye and make adjustments to our positions and our buying habits based on what’s happening in the market.

So, we’re tuned into it three or four times a week, trying to make sure we’re set.

You know, the other challenge in our market is obviously when fuel and fertilizer and inputs are at a high level and our cropping hasn’t had the best price support in the market for the growers.

Grass seed is probably lifting a little bit, but we need some more margin in the crops for growers because that goes to grower success.

So, those hours, you know, we really need to figure out how to make that happen for the grower. And, you know, it’s supply and demand and inventory.

And if we’re overproduced on inventory, we all know the challenge we face, right? It’s a thing with farming.

So, if we can find opportunities to help our growers eke out some more margin, that’s—we’re most of us in this organization have a farming background, so we’re heavily tied to it.

Eric Sfiligoj

Interesting. I know I’ve been talking to other retailers around the country, and I know in the Mid-South, in the Midwest, everybody’s mentioned the fact that commodity prices are low and crop prices are high.

And it looks like, based on the early read for the 2026 harvest, things are going just great. So, that is a positive that the harvest looks like it’s going to be strong, but that also means you’re going to have no supply shortages, which tend to mean the prices stay down.

Is that a similar scenario that’s playing out in Oregon in your markets as well, or is it a little different?

Jeff Freeman

The price is staying down, obviously, where the grass seed capital of the world and nurseries, our biggest agricultural commodity by value. So, tie both of those to housing and construction starts.

So, we get very skewed in that. I think it was back in 2008. Midwest corn prices were pretty good, and there was a big pull on fertilizer demand and prices went up.

But we were struggling out here with cash flow for growers. So, at that point in time, there was a big switch in acres from grass seed into wheat because wheat was $10, $12 a bushel.

So, we had an alternative. As diverse as the Willamette Valley is in its cropping system, we do rely on some grass seed, almost too much at the grower level, to create revenue.

And when price is not good, we don’t have a lot of alternatives to rotate to. So, that’s one of our big challenges as well: finally finding another crop or two that can contribute but fit into the rotation.

Eric Sfiligoj

Okay. All right. Well, very good. Well, Jeff, as we wrap up, I mean, looking forward to next growing season, the 2027 growing season, what are some of the major market objectives that Marion Ag Service is going to have in the marketplace, and why are those important ones?

Jeff Freeman

Yeah, that question is a pretty simple one for us. We’ve seen a lot of growth in the last five or seven years. And it’s gotten to a point where we now have 140 employees, and employees—the team—is our lifeblood.

And anytime you go through growth, you have change, and you never want to affect the customer.

So, for us, it’s putting our head down, making sure our team has the resources to service the customer.

That’s where we’re at right now: really internally focused, looking out at our customers and making sure we can take care of them.

Eric Sfiligoj

All right. Well, very good. Well, hey, Jeff Freeman, thank you so much for joining us for this edition of CropLife Retail Week.

I certainly enjoyed talking to you about what’s going on in the retail market out on the West Coast. And again, like I say, envious—you get the low humidity. I particularly hate the high humidity we deal with here in the Midwest in the summer months.

Jeff Freeman

People think of Oregon as wet, and it is eight months of the year, but it’s a desert for another four, right?

Eric Sfiligoj

Well, very good. Well, listen, thank you again for joining us.

And again, viewers, if you want more information on Marion Ag Service, check out CropLife. Like I said, we just did an article on the company celebrating its 50th anniversary here in 2026.

On behalf of myself and everyone at Meister Media and CropLife Media Group, thanks for joining us for this edition, and we will see you again next week.

If you have questions or feedback about today’s episode of Retail Week, you can contact us by email or on X, or share your thoughts in the comments section below. We value your input, and we’ll do our best to address it in next week’s episode. And be sure to subscribe!