CropLife Retail Week: Labeling Law Push, Planting Progress Report, and John Deere on Tariffs

Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski reunite in the studio to discuss a national push for the Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act, strong crop progress numbers, and John Deere’s response to $100M in tariff costs.

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*Below is a partial and edited transcript:

Eric Sfiligoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj, editor of CropLife and CropLife Iron, believe it or not, here in studio with Lara Sowinski. Lara, welcome to in studio.

Lara Sowinski: Yeah. Thank you. Sounds really loud. And my ears like. Oh, well, that’s because you’re here.

ES: I was going to say so Lara came into our offices this week for some company meetings, and we decided, hey, since she’s here, we might as well get into the studio together for probably, like, the first time in a couple of years at least.

LS: Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great.

ES: So hey, just to everybody to share some news with you, I know the last couple of videos we’ve been talking a little bit about this whole question about state labeling versus federal labeling. And you know, we’ve had a couple of stories regarding, groups like Bayer and certain states passing legislation, basically saying that the FIFA, standards, the national standards are good enough for product labeling.

But now we have another story along those lines. The Modern Ag Alliance has joined 365 agricultural and allied organizations and signed a letter urging Congress to pass what’s being called the agricultural label Uniformity Act, which this legislation then would clear up all the questions regarding state issues and Modern Ag Alliance Executive Director Elizabeth Bernstein Thompson had this to say food security is national security.

This common sense legislation prevents activist state regulators from undermining the system that is successfully guided U.S. agriculture for decades. So fingers crossed. You know, we’ve got the Supreme Court maybe getting involved, and now it looks like we may get Congress to take a take a stand on this issue. So it would be great to clear this up.

I know, for everyone across the country.

LS: Yeah, actually, that’s a good news item. Makes sense. I hope it gets some traction and yeah, kind of streamline things. Make it simple. Standardize.

ES: Well, good. Agreed. And other good news to share since we’re sticking with the good news, we’ve been talking about what’s going on in the planting area.

And of course, the weather has been very cold and rainy here in the Midwest. And I know plantings across the Midwest have not been, keeping up with the National or the five year averages. But I guess the weather has improved significantly. According to the latest crop progress report from USDA, corn is now 87% complete when it comes to planting, and that’s up from 78% in the past week or so.

And just a couple other notes. Turn the page here. There it is. Sorry about that, guys. Two page story. So soybean plantings are a little slower at the moment. 76% planted. That’s up from 66% the prior week, but down from 78% for the five year average cotton plantings, or 52%. It’s slightly behind the average of 56%.

And then spring wheat is at 87% complete, but that’s ahead 7% from the five year average. So, the growers in the across the country with the good weather have been getting a lot of crop in the ground, which is great. Do you have your corn and beans in the ground?

LS: Know I don’t grow them myself, I must admit.

ES: So cool. All right. So, hey, that’s what I have to share. What do you got?

LS: A little bit of the equipment and supply chain news. This is, Wall Street Journal’s logistics report from Monday, June 2nd. Wall Street Journal is reporting that, John Deere is, scrutinizing supply chain contracts. It can renegotiate in order to find cost savings and efficiencies to offset tariffs, which cost the company about 100 million in the last quarter.

Well, according to Wall Street Journal, about 80% of Deere’s products sold in the U.S are made in the U.S. However, international operations are critical to its supply chain, which exposes the company to retaliatory tariffs on Deere’s CFO, says many of its products are duty free under the U.S Mexico-Canada agreement. However, it never finished some certificates for the exemptions, which, the CFO said the company is working on now.

Ultimately, John Deere is looking at some price hikes with increases of 2 to 4% for early order 2026 model year sprayers and planters in response to inflation. That’s what Deere is doing.

Another news item. This is great. See, will work with Starlink on agriculture connectivity. This is out of satellitetoday.com.

Multinational agricultural agriculture brands, you know, just signed an agreement with Starlink to bring satellite connectivity to farmers. CNN announced on May 15th that Starlink will equip CNH brands with, quote, robust and affordable high speed connectivity, further unlocking the benefits of a fully connected fleet. No news yet on specifics about the timeline or scale of the rollout.

Lastly, CNN shared an image of Starlink terminals installed on combines. The company detailed that the Starlink low Earth orbit level connectivity will allow its machines to communicate and coordinate and integrate with the company’s field UPS digital platform for farm management. Signage also described precision spraying as a use case, explaining that Sterling can export data, quote near instantaneously to create a prescription spring map for the machine.

ES: So that kind of falls under this smart tech incentive.

LS: It does, and I believe that Starlink is Elon Musk’s company or one of them, right? Yep. You know, so that’s interesting. Yeah. So another new development. Connectivity is the same kind of that connect the farm. Just like being in the same studio together. There’s connectivity here right in person. What a concept.