CropLife Retail Week: Fendt Lodge Opening, Missouri Crop Protection Protection, and a Year Devoted to Women in Ag
May 3, 2024 Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski review the recent Fendt Lodge opening ceremony in Jackson, MN, legislation to protect against lawsuits, and 2026 being dedicated to women farmers.
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Edited Video Transcript:
Eric Sfilogoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfilogoj, Editor, CropLife here back in virtual studio with Lara Sowinski. Lara, how are you doing?
Lara Sowinksi: I’m fine, thank you.
ES: I’m just I’m just glad we’re back together because I know, like, I like I teased you before we got on last week. I had to do that video all by myself. And it’s hard talking the entire time and not being totally mentally worn out when you’re done. But hopefully everybody enjoyed my talk and I’ll have an update. Towards the end of the video on one of the things we talked about last week.
I was a little bit of a traveler this week. On May 1st, I actually had the privilege to attend the grand opening of the new Fendt Lodge in Jackson, Minnesota. Our friends at Fendt AGCO actually opened that new facility. Just some facts on that. It’s 16,000 square feet and it’s the official branch home in North America for Fendt.
It can be used for dealer training, events, sales meetings and brand celebrations, but it also includes a whole history of Fendt and AGCO products. There’s a lot of displays and interactive things there where folks can come and see everything for themselves.
Eric Hansotia: We’ll talk a minute about our heritage. You know, I’ve got a long lineage. It goes all the way back to the 16th century. It’s hard to believe. I get to ride around that, you know, 4600 miles away from where we’re standing today is where the birthplace of Fendt started. It’s in Germany. And we’re the family became known as skilled craftsmen, and their workmanship was super high quality.
There’s about 400 years ago, in 1635, that Sylvester Fenton was building church clocks and locks. So he became famous in the area for being better than anybody else in that profession. And that was kind of the precision, the topic at the at that day and age, and set the culture in motion of what would be precision agriculture later on.
But 100 years ago, in 1930, Johansson built the first diesel rice tractor. And the emblem is up there. That’s the same emblem is when Johan put on his very first tractor, and we’ve got a replica or refurbished machine out in the front there. So we’ve got an enormous way, a long way over that time horizon to be here right now in Jackson, Minnesota, celebrating our North America brand home and planting our flag, declaring to the market how strong we intend to be for our farmers in this market that we’ve been.
We’ve been a farmer focused company from the beginning, but we’re really doubling down on that now and intending to be the most farmer focused company in the industry today, is known for its innovation and excellence. In fact, I like to say, you know, to the farmers, it’s just the best of the best. If you are the most demanding farmer in your marketplace, you deserve to drive set, first as a key contributor to overall and it goes growth in our strength in the marketplace.
We’ve got essentially three growth engines growing farm globally, disclosing the full line of planters, sprayers, tractors and farmers to our best farmers in the world. Number two is growing our and service business. And number three is our precision egg technology business. All three of those kind of melt together in the overall great experience, great products that carry the latest technology, great service and support and the first experience.
The farmers have responded as they’ve been experiencing it. We’ve grown our business. We’ve doubled it from 21, almost doubled its until 2021 to 20 23 or 2 years ahead of our original game plan.
ES: So that’s what Eric Hansotia had to say regarding the new Fendt Lodge and the Fendt brand and AGCO. And also on hand was Torsten Dehner, from Fendt proper. And he had this to say about this being the Fendt Lodge opening is a great moment for Fendt in the North American marketplace and what it need for, of course, the farmers and agriculture going forward.
Torsten Dehner: You say Star Trek all the other very bright, not only in North America but also often globally. It is also a very emotional moment for my team, and I, as you can feel, our great grain comes together.
In the last couple of years, it has grown old and established the strong position in North America. This success is built upon an outstanding product portfolio, a distribution network that is getting stronger every day and the very passionate fan team in North America, and what I consider loving it as the real secret sauce that many farmers that has become passionate brand ambassadors for this brand here in North America, all last year that protect me, called the world’s largest I papa.
Sure he really felt you introduce our new friend Grady Clayton. We all strive finished this plane races the farthest our customers in the center of all our work, just like it has always been fulfilled. Our customers follow this little flight plan that follows with usual foresight. Herschel and Elevate with Ikea, which means these are the values we share with the brand in designing, producing our products and serving our customers.
ES: So that’s what the folks from Fendt and AGCO had to say at the Fendt Lodge opening.
I would encourage anybody who has the opportunity, if you get up to Jackson, Minnesota, stop by and visit. They’ve got a gift shop. And like I say, you the history of the company, you can, you know, look in and see stuff being built on the, on the plant floor that in Jackson, Minnesota, of course, you know, the building, the the Fendt row gators and and tractors as well.
And, yeah, it was a great experience. And, I would highly recommend it to anyone who makes their way up there. But again, my thanks to everyone that Agco Fendt for inviting me to take part in the opening ceremony. It was great. That’s awesome. Cool. Yeah. Very good. So hey, one thing update I know a couple videos ago you and I had talked, a couple of statehouses around the country, and you’ve got legislatures that have introduced bills that would help out our friends in the crop protection industry in particular, they were talking about some of the, lawsuit difficulties that have been had by our friends at Bayer regarding glyphosate.
And actually, we found out this week that, Bayer actually here in the U.S. has their, their headquarters in main facility there in just outside of Saint Louis. I know you were there earlier this year visiting with those folks. I’m happy to report that the statehouse in Missouri has, actually approved, a piece of legislation that will act to help shield, companies, pesticide companies like Bayer, against frivolous lawsuits, as they’re calling them.
They actually said with the passage of the bill that it would, allow the pesticide labels to be, quote unquote, sufficient to satisfy any requirement for a label of regarding cancer, unquote. So and again, there have been a couple of other states, Iowa, Idaho, where similar legislation been proposed. but this one now has passed the Missouri House, and it goes to the Missouri Senate next.
So we’ll see what happens here. But maybe our friends at Bayer will be getting a little bit of protection, legislatively from, from the state of Missouri going forward on, what’s the timeline, for the, the Senate, the Missouri Senate to take that up? You know, I did not find that lower in the item that I read, but, I mean, usually one one, one branch in in the state legislature, when one branch passes something that usually gets taken up fairly quickly by the other branch.
So I imagine in the next video or two, probably by the end of the month, certainly we’ll have an update we can give on what the Missouri Senate decided regarding this legislation. Okay. Sounds good right? Yeah. So I guess now that you’re back in virtual chair with the cornfield behind you. Of course. So what do you have to share this week?
LS: I wanted to, recognize a couple of our, ambassadors from our women in our tech group, and, several of them had some really big news, this past week. So, wanted to start with, Jennifer Goldston, ambassador and my pal over at AgTech PR.
Jennifer’s the founder and CEO of AgTech PR. She announced this week the inaugural AgTech advisory board. And honestly, she has, four excellent, women on this board, Sherry Fry from Nielson IQ, Erin Fitzgerald from Erin Fitzgerald Consulting, Bonnie Brayton, Fulcrum Global Capital and Julie Borlaug, granddaughter of Dr. Norman Borlaug, and Borlaug Foundation & Borlaug Consulting.
So, congratulations to Jennifer and the team at AgTech PR. Secondly, our, ambassador Joyce Hunter. Joyce has done so much in her career, but amongst, the list of things she served as both the interim CEO, CIO and deputy CIO at the USDA and has held other senior leadership roles within the federal government.
Joyce also does a lot of work, to advance Stem and data science, education for underserved, young people. And, so this week, Joyce announced a new, position. She is now with mission critical, mission critical, delivers nonpartisan, objective and expert cybersecurity research to technical and non-technical communities across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors.
It’s mission hyphen critical.org. so check that out. The work that they’re doing is just awesome. So congratulations to Joyce for that, new role. and then just, on Thursday evening, Joyce emailed over something and I, I just, I literally, like, jumped, was jumping around the house. So check this out, Eric.
So planning is underway at the Women in Ag Tech to celebrate this. This is just great news. Well, great. Yeah, I know, of course, you probably already have most of the agenda locked in for the Women in Ag Tech meeting coming up here at the end of July.
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