In this edition of CropLife Retail Week, CropLife Editor Eric Sfiligoj sits down with Ben Hushon, Certified Crop Advisor from The Mill, to unpack dealing with growers who won’t make purchase decisions, strategizing for fertilizer sales, and how to get growers to use Smart Tech.
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*Below is a partial and edited transcript:
Eric Sfiligoj:
Hello again. Eric Sfiligoj here with CropLife Media Group. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m here this week with a special guest. That would be Ben Hushon, a Certified Crop Advisor from The Mill in Maryland. Ben, welcome to the program.
Ben Hushon:
Good morning, Eric. Thank you very much for the invite. I appreciate it.
Eric Sfiligoj:
Yeah, I was going to say, I know you and I have done videos before on-site at various events, but I’ve never had you on Retail Week. So, yes, you’re a rookie. Welcome to the program.
Ben Hushon:
Thank you. I’ll try not to let you down and make too many rookie mistakes.
Eric Sfiligoj:
I’m sure everything will go fine.
So, hey, Ben, I know The Mill is one of our CropLife 100 ag retailers and has been for several years. Obviously, our audience and viewers are ag retailers. If you could kind of sum up what kind of year we’ve had as retailers here in 2026, what have been some of the key challenges that everyone’s had to deal with?
Ben Hushon:
So, Eric, summing it up, it probably was one of the wilder years. This is the 24th year for The Mill to be in the fertilizer and ag retail space. The feed side of our business has been in operation closer to 70 years.
But on the crop, on the agronomy side, I would say the first word that jumps to my mind for 2026 coming into spring was paralysis.
Eric, we had folks in our community who had a great year in 2025. It was a very, very good year as far as harvest, yields, etc. And the prices were different in the East. We’re feeding lots of cattle and chickens nearby, and pigs, so we’re generally on a plus basis. Take Chicago right now: we’re 40 cents over basis.
So we had a lot of good things coming into 2026, but farmers just held on to almost all their decisions right up until close to planting time.
And, of course, the checkbook matters. Finances absolutely matter. So then we roll on in, and of course, as an ag retailer, we’re trying to decide: Are they going to cut back on nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium?
Clearly, through the winter, it’s very common in our area to spread fall potash or winter potash. That didn’t even happen. And, Eric, we had the lowest price for potash in this region that we had seen in 10 years, and folks still just were locked into that paralysis of making decisions.
Again, we rolled on into spring with lots of down talk about grain prices.
So we had some, again, challenges trying to decide as a retailer how far ahead we should get on our purchasing. We clearly got the sulfur one wrong, with the highest prices we’ve ever seen on ammonium sulfate. That was greatly reduced.
We worked our way through that, and phosphorus continued to be a challenge. I mean, when you’re approaching $1,000 a ton, farmers find ways to move poultry manure down from Pennsylvania or pursue many other options.
So it came into the spring with a lot of hesitation. In the end, it turned out to be a very good year.
Now we’re rolling into harvest. We’re probably 50% of the way through harvest in this region, this part of the Mid-Atlantic. There are exceptions, but corn and bean yields are some of the best farmers have ever seen.
There’s always those exceptions, those dry pockets.
Eric Sfiligoj:
Well, hey, one other thing I want to bring up, if we could. I know we had mentioned it earlier when we were talking a little bit about the later decision-making taking place in the marketplace.
I know some people have pointed to the influx of new technologies in agriculture as making that possible because technology is getting so advanced and so good. Growers can make later decisions, and there won’t necessarily be as many consequences if they decide wrong because of that.
Now, the reason I bring that up is I know The Mill has been doing precision ag for several years. Tell the viewers, if you could, a little bit about The Mill’s precision ag programs and how those have evolved recently with new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, coming into the mix.
Ben Hushon:
Yep. Great question. I’ll try to keep the answer a little shorter than it could be.
We probably got real serious into the technology space about nine years ago, I believe. We started working with a nitrogen model called Adapt and helping farmers figure it out, helping us figure out whether we trusted it or not.
Then, I believe it was 2021, we actually launched what we call Decision Ag Solutions. We took my son and moved him from an agronomy role into this position full-time because there’s so much precision ag technology around us.
I just kept looking at these three-ring binders of yield maps and thinking, “So what? What in the world are we doing with it?”
So ever since then, literally every hour that he’s at work, he is working with farmers, trying to take the technology they have and bring that back to their farm to help them make agronomic decisions based on their own data.
We just kept seeing, over and over, guys have yield maps in a three-ring binder. Then they’d go to a field day somewhere, walk a corn trial, and make decisions based on what they saw. They were using what scrolled by on the yield monitor to give them some impressions.
But it is amazing, Eric, when you sit down with a farmer and say, “Well, you have three or four years of data. Can we compile that and bring that information back to you and help you start making decisions by field?”
Ideally, where we want to get them is subfield.
So we really work on trying to figure out where they are in this technology journey. You don’t have to have a yield monitor, GPS, or anything. We can bring nitrogen modeling to you.
But if you have yield monitors, we’re going to help you get them calibrated. That’s pretty important.
We’re going to sit down, comb through your data, not data from the university or some trial in South Dakota. We’re going to pare it down to your data because it’s unbelievable the value this brings.
Then, if they’re ready, we can move them into variable-rate fertilizer and variable-rate seeding.
And, Eric, what’s interesting is that when we started on this journey seriously in 2021, a lot of the farmers’ equipment already had the capability. They had already bought the combine that had the yield monitor. They just had never connected it to GPS.
And so that’s the journey we’re on.
The emphasis is not on having a public meeting saying this product is six bushels better than that. It’s about having many, many more one-on-one conversations with farmers and helping them make thoughtful decisions based on subfield data, or at least by farm.
Eric Sfiligoj:
Interesting. Yeah. And you mentioned Decision Ag, your program for using technology in the field. Also, earlier you mentioned some of the smaller field sizes you’re dealing with. Is that new technology better for a farmer with a smaller field versus a larger one? I’m curious.
Ben Hushon:
You know, that’s a good question because when we started presenting to folks, saying, “Hey, we’re going to talk about variable-rate fertilizer,” so many of them would say, “I’m already doing that. My average field size is seven acres, and I’m doing soil samples.”
We’re fortunate in the footprint we’re in. Soil samples are normal and typical. It used to be every three years, but a lot of folks have moved to every other year.
But what we’ve learned is that in a typical 10- to 12-acre field in our region, because of the rolling hills, we’re going to have a minimum of three different soil types.
Thankfully, all the companies on the equipment side have adapted very quickly and have led in this space, allowing us to change rates on the fly.
Again, we find farmers with John Deere and Case IH planters that have the ability to do this, but they just hadn’t turned it on because they needed somebody to help walk them through it.
Farmers are smart, but it’s a matter of whether they want to give up time farming to sit in the office and learn this technology.
So we encourage them by saying, “We know you’re smart enough. Let us help you through this process.”
Think about the first time somebody gave you a smartphone. You’re like, “Oh, all I can do is answer the phone. I don’t know what else to do with it.”
But you had friends or family who kind of coached you through it. That’s sort of what we’re trying to do.
And you mentioned something about going forward. One of our focuses in 2027 is addressing the fact that there are so many different platforms that don’t speak to each other.
We’re finding that we’re working with AI, trying to ramp up the connection between those platforms. It’s really been impactful. We’re excited about several things we’ll be able to do in 2027.
In our case, we find farms that might have a Kinze planter hooked to a John Deere, and maybe they even have a Case IH combine from two years ago.
We’re using AI to speed up that connection and get those answers quicker because you’re right: What’s going to happen every spring is we’re going to get a call saying, “Hey, I’m going to plant in a couple of days. You talked back in February about maybe helping me come up with variable-rate seeding.”
We want to be able to quickly pivot because we don’t want to turn somebody new away.
We’re trying to make it less human-labor-intensive and let the humans oversee the results that come out of it a little more.
Eric Sfiligoj:
All right. Very good.
Well, hey, Ben, as we wrap up here, you mentioned 2027 and The Mill’s plans for 2027. But in general, what is the early read? And I know crystal-ball gazing is always haphazard, but as we sit here in fall 2026, what’s the early read on the 2027 season, and why?
Ben Hushon:
So I’m an optimist, and honestly, I think most farmers are optimists.
We’ll just hope the landlords who are maybe going to raise the price of rent if they hear this aren’t listening.
But I think, in general, we’re optimistic.
We are harvesting a very strong yield in this region. So, in general, cash should be good. Yes, costs are absolutely up, but the grain price is good, and farmers are going to farm.
I think there are many more options now for financing because we went through an industry period of time where you had to go to the bank or deal with somebody charging you 14%.
Well, ag retailers, including ourselves and probably most of our competitors nearby, now have in-house financing that is much more like a prime-type interest rate, in some cases even below prime.
So going forward, I look at the strong yields they’ve had, and I think they’ll have good cash.
There will be worries about what 2027 holds, but I think farmers were reminded this year that some took their foot off the gas.
We were dry in July, and they’re thinking, “I don’t think I want to fly that fungicide on my corn because we’re dry.”
Well, then that window of opportunity closed. Tar spot fortunately came in late enough that I don’t think it hurt us, but gray leaf spot rolled in. And then, on top of that, we had a grain price bump in August.
So suddenly, guys are saying, “Oh my gosh, I probably should have done more of the acres, or I should have had that done.”
So I think there’s been some reminders this year that if you let the negative possibilities get to you, you might even have $3.80 corn this fall or next fall in 2027. I think folks have been reminded that, yeah, that could happen, but it pretty rarely does.
And if you’re paying attention to markets, there’ll be opportunities during the year to lock in a pretty solid price.
So I’m looking for an optimistic outlook. I really am.
Eric Sfiligoj:
All right. Well, finally, if you could offer maybe one or two takeaways for ag retailers who might be watching this—things they could do to plan ahead and get ready for 2027 so that they’re not caught by surprise by anything.
Ben Hushon:
I think you need to be thinking strongly about financing because farmers definitely are looking for more financing.
I think all the media, like yourselves, all the magazine articles I read and notifications, talk about how farmers are looking for financing. So I definitely would be looking at that.
And I don’t know, we’re in the East, so an awful lot of our fertilizer that we sell is imported.
For us, we’re taking possession now. We’re not going to say, “I don’t see the price moving in the next 60 days. I’ll push that decision off.”
As an ag retailer, I believe you can’t sell what you don’t have. So we’re filling a lot of the bins.
Eric Sfiligoj:
Okay. All right. Very good.
Well, Ben from The Mill, thank you so much for joining us for this edition of CropLife Retail Week. We’ve certainly enjoyed having you. It’s always good to talk to you again, my friend. And tell all of my friends there at The Mill, including Tim, that I said hello.
And viewers, we hope you enjoyed this edition of CropLife Retail Week, and we will see you again next week.
