Growers in Montana Embrace Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes, with Lyle Benjamin and Andrew Pritchard

From painfully dry weather across much of North America to record high temps in the South and West to massive wildfires in the North, weather extremes have impacted growers across the continent this year.

In this episode, we will start with a weather update from Nutrien Ag Solutions® Senior Meteorologist Andrew Pritchard. Andrew will explain how an emerging El Nino pattern and a weakened jet stream have contributed to the conditions we've seen and how there may be some relief for parched parts of the Corn Belt as the calendar rolls into August.

We will also hear from Nutrien Ag Solutions Crop Consultant Lyle Benjamin. As one of the early adopters of our Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes and soil organic carbon programs, Lyle has secured more than 150,000 acres of enrollment across his territory in the arid Mountain West.

And it turns out that, in a drought-heavy year, we can all learn a lot from growers in one of the driest parts of the country. Lyle will discuss what's working for his customers and what's not, what we can learn from his neighbors to the North in Canada and why growers should get enrolled.

Episode Transcript

Lyle Benjamin:

The key to remember… this is the grower’s program. They know their fields, they know their practices. It’s going to take you a half day or a day to enter this information in, and this is probably going to be the best per-hour wage you receive all year, is this program. 

Dusty Weis:

Welcome to the Future, Faster, a Sustainable Agriculture podcast by Nutrien Ag Solutions. With our very own Tom Daniel, director of North America Retail and Grower Sustainable Ag, and Dr. Sally Flis, director, Sustainability Program Design and Outcome Management. This is your opportunity to learn about the next horizon in sustainable agriculture for growers, for partners, for the planet. To us, it's not about changing what's always worked, it's about continuing to do the little things that make a big impact. On this week's episode, we're joined by Nutrien Ag Solutions meteorologist Andrew Pritchard and crop consultant Lyle Benjamin. We're going to be talking about some of the strange weather patterns that we've seen this year and how growers in the arid Mountain West are incorporating sustainability practices into their operations today. But if you haven't yet, make sure you're subscribed to this podcast in your favorite app. Also, make sure to follow Nutrien Ag Solutions on Facebook and Instagram. I'm Dusty Weis and it's time once again to introduce Sally Flis. Sally, unfortunately, Tom is not going to be able to join us today, but it's good to see you again. How are you doing? 

Sally Flis:

Yeah, it's good to see you too Dusty. How are things going in your neck of the woods? 

Dusty Weis:

Dry, so very, very dry, and in fact, that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about, because filling in for Tom to bring us a little bit of meteorological expertise is Andrew Pritchard, senior meteorologist for Nutrien Ag Solutions, because well, there's a lot of weather affecting growers right now. So, Andrew, thanks for joining us. 

Andrew Pritchard:

Thank you for having me. 

Dusty Weis:

I don't even know where to start here, Andrew. We've got record high temperatures across much of the south and west, wildfires in the north, sending smoke and haze across the continent, and then lots and lots of drought. It's been beautiful weather here in the Upper Midwest and that's been the problem. Blue skies for weeks on end means we've barely had any rain to speak of, but I guess, let's start big picture. What's driving these weather patterns that we see? 

Andrew Pritchard:

We're really entering a very classic summertime pattern and that means that the jet stream is kind of weakened, we're kind of seeing less impacts from our ocean teleconnections, and we've got this weak jet stream that's lifting north and that's allowing some of that heat to build. Of course, we did just see a shot of cooler dry air settling into the central part of the country, but that's going to be replaced by some building heat, but then we see the pattern kind of flipping cool again. We've got a progressive summer pattern here, which is good in some light because it keeps the pattern evolving. We're not just doing unending heat across some of these areas that are experiencing some of the drought, but you are right, along with that classic summertime pattern, the precipitation is rather sparse and a lot more missed than it is hit at this point. 

Sally Flis:

While we do have a lot of drought across many parts of North America, one of the members of our team, he got eight inches of rain in Kentucky overnight, so that gets to that hit or miss point where we're getting it, we're getting a lot. 

Andrew Pritchard:

Yes, and that's common of summertime. There's a lot of moisture in the air, it's very hot, it's very muggy, and so sometimes we can get a boundary to set up where it becomes the focal point for some thunderstorms to develop, and what moves thunderstorms along is the jet stream. During the summer months when we have that weakened jet stream, there's really not much to push the storms along, and so that's how you can end up with these torrential tropical downpours over a very localized area. It would be wonderful to take that eight inches of rain and spread it out over a large area over multiple days, but that's what we end up with. Folks are missing out, but then the people who get the rain, I heard this from some folks in Alberta and Western Saskatchewan too where they're like, we got a little too much rain. It's hard to please everyone in the summer, that's pretty typical, but at least we're keeping some of those opportunities going, because I know that there's a lot of landscape that has a pretty big moisture deficit right now. 

Dusty Weis:

Now Andrew, a few episodes ago we talked about what was at the time an emerging El Nino pattern. Can you remind us real quick, what's the El Nino, and safe to assume that that is now emerged and is set up and is helping drive a lot of this weather we're seeing as well? 

Andrew Pritchard:

Absolutely, yeah. We've just ended the multi-year La Nina. We were getting tired of talking about the La Nina. It kept faking us out. We have finally shaken that. We did that during the end of the winter into the early spring, and we are moving strongly into El Nino, and a strong El Nino at that. When we talk about La Nina and El Nino, we're talking about the ocean temperatures near the equator, and so the La Nina, that would be the cold phase, El Nino is the warm phase. We say cold and warm phase, but what's really happening there is it's a difference in the trade winds when we're in a La Nina, we've got stronger trade winds near the equator, those are dredging up those colder waters from the depths, and so we can see the cold anomalies there, that's what we notice, but we know that that's really a symptom of the stronger trade winds. 

Now the opposite of that, the El Nino, that's a weakening of the trade winds, and so you can imagine those weaker trade winds are allowing that ocean water to cook there down near the equator and we end up with that warmer anomaly. Learning more and more over the last several decades that the oceans have a big impact on the atmosphere. Those two are communicating, and what's going on in the Pacific Ocean has a big impact on our weather here. La Nina, we typically end up with a weaker, more disorganized jet stream. El Nino as we head deeper into the winter, we typically associate that with a stronger, more consolidated jet stream, typically across the Southern US. The impact of La Nina and El Nino becomes a little bit more muted as we get deeper into the summer months, and that's kind of what we're seeing here.

We had a bit of a run through June into early July where we had very strong jet stream flow. That's what helped us deliver a lot of precipitation to parts of the southern high plains, portions of Texas, Colorado, New Mexico into Kansas, parts of the Oklahoma panhandle, picked up a lot of repeated rounds of heavy rains and that was that strong enhanced subtropical jet stream. 

Now, as we've gone through much of July, we're seeing that jet stream begin to weaken a little bit, but as we head deeper into the fall and then eventually into the winter, we do expect to see that stronger, more consolidated jet stream come back, and so that's what gives us hope here that while it might not be immediate, we're still going to be dealing with this hit or miss precipitation activity that's typical of summertime, as we get deeper into the fall in the winter, that more concentrated jet stream that should lead to an active storm track and one that's bringing organized storm systems, and that type of precipitation spreads across multiple states or multiple provinces in over several days span instead of just giving one county eight inches of rain or something like that.

Dusty Weis:

So, I guess, break it down by region then, what can growers in specific parts of North America expect for the rest of the year here? 

Andrew Pritchard:

We'll start here in the Corn Belt, we've got a shot of cooler air making its way in right now, temperatures are topping out in the upper seventies and the lower eighties, we've got lower humidity across a big swath of the Corn Belt that's going to be changing. We're going to see ridge of high pressure that's going to be first developing across the western US and then impacting parts of the prairies, going to be shifting off to the east and setting up right over the Midwest. That's where we'll be seeing those high temperatures heading for the upper nineties, and in some cases we'll be talking about triple digits, places like Kansas City, St. Louis topping out around a hundred degrees. Now, as we kind of move off to the Western US… 

From Arizona into parts of the Central Valley, and we've got those nineties and a hundreds building into the Pacific Northwest. We're going to see those temperatures begin to peel back across the western third of the US, your west of the Rockies, at the same time that we start dealing with the new heat in the Midwest. Things will be a little bit more consistent as you make your way off to the Northeast, and then parts of the southeastern US, we've got that cooler air in place right now, temperatures anywhere from the seventies in the Northeast and the mid-eighties into the Mid-Atlantic. Then you find very classic late July humid nineties, as you get down into the Southern US. Parts of the south, the Gulf Coast, you'll get that shot of relatively cooler air as it comes in, we're all going to be knocking it back into the middle eighties.

Texas will talk about the southern plains. You're also feeling a little bit of that shot of cool air in the panhandle, anywhere from western Kansas into the Texas panhandle, we'll also be headed for the upper nineties to around a hundred degrees. Now, as we look further, let's talk about the month of August. The good news, if you're in the Corn Belt, this heat that's coming up is not going to be a main stay. As we look at the outlook for the entire month of August, the pattern really kind of settles back into one that favors a ridge of high pressure in the Western United States with some troughing and some upper level low pressure across the Great Lakes in the Midwest, and what that should do is set us up in a pattern where the Western US probably going to be a bit hot and dry, whereas in the Corn Belt going to be a little bit cooler and we'll have the chance for those ridge riding thunderstorms. 

Anywhere from far Eastern Nebraska down into Eastern Oklahoma all the way across the Mid-Atlantic there, that does include much of the central and eastern Corn Belt, the Ohio Valley, parts in the Mid-South likely going to be looking at near average, if not a little bit above average precipitation during the month of August. Now of course, we're still talking about a month out. That's a little bit speculatory, but that is good news for us here on the Corn Belt. We're already dealing with some stressed crops out there due to the drought in some of the recent heat. We certainly don't want to then take this July heat and take it all the way into August and beyond, so good news there that we do see a bit of a favorable background state setting up for us for the rest of the summer here that should keep the excessive heat at bay.

Some folks are going to be winners, others will not. But all we can really ask for this time of year, and I say this a lot, is just to have those chances. It's a pretty good outlook across the Corn Belt and one that should help take this crop and maybe carry it along toward the finish line. Folks across the Western US, of course, are going to be paying the price for that in the form of likely continued hot and dry conditions out there following the very wet, and to the winter and early spring, probably flipping back to a hot pattern across the west. 

Sally Flis:

So Andrew, one more question for you here. We’re the sustainability team so thinking about that cycle of El Nino and La Nina how is that changing as we think about you mentioned how important ocean temperature is to setting up those two different patterns. How is that trend changing, staying the same? Is there not really a trend to how that switches back and forth? 

Andrew Pritchard:

When we talk about El Nino and La Nina, it's really a new science and we have a hard time understanding how the ocean temperatures are really going to be evolving. We have a hard time modeling that, and so a lot of times we're kind of reacting. And so, there's a lot of science going on, a lot of research going on to try to improve this because if we could unlock that secret, of course that makes a world of difference in our ability to forecast weather patterns two, three, four months out into the future, so when it comes to these ocean patterns, El Nino, La Nina sensing things in real time, doing our best to kind of model things, but they're imperfect forecast, it's an imperfect science right now, and as we saw just the last couple of years where we really expected this La Nina to fade and we did not see that happen, it faked us out and came right back. 

We're doing better and better. The science is progressing. We have ensemble forecasts, and so that means that we're taking many forecasts, we're looking at the trends here and so we can get a good idea if there's a consensus that we're moving somewhere. At the end of the day, just because we switched to El Nino does not mean that the jet stream and the weather patterns are going to react immediately. There are other things that can come in. We came into May and June, of course, Eric Snodgrass and myself, the weather team here, we really expected a quite active and stormy spring across the Midwest. We had all of the makings of it with this very enhanced subtropical jet stream that I had been mentioning here, but we ended up with a blocking pattern across the Eastern US. We had this high over low and that really stopped storm systems from progressing from west to east across the country.

That's the pattern that ended up getting a lot of rain to parts of the southern high plains that badly needed it, but that block prevented storm systems then from coming into the Midwest, that's what got us started on that dry spell as we really shut precipitation down deeper in April into June when really we had the makings of an active pattern, it just was not allowed to progress since. At the end of the day when we're trying to forecast the weather one to three months out, there is a lot of speculation that goes on. There's a lot of reacting to changes in real time, trying to understand how those are going to impact things as we move forward. 

Dusty Weis:

Well, we certainly appreciate your giving us a look under the hood here, Andrew. Again, it's important, but it's also fascinating to talk about these things, and from where I'm sitting in Wisconsin, I'm glad to hear that the dry has a good chance of breaking in the next month or so here because I have seen some of the saddest looking corn out in the non-irrigated fields that I've seen in a long time around here. Andrew Pritchard, senior meteorologist for Nutrien Ag Solutions, thank you so much for joining us, and safe travels getting home here. 

Andrew Pritchard:

I appreciate it. Thank you. 

Dusty Weis:

Sally, Andrew talked a lot about the dry conditions that we're feeling in a lot of North America right now, but one place that is always dry is the great state of Montana, and yet that is where our next guest comes from, so hopefully Lyle is going to have a few tips for the rest of us on how to weather these drought conditions. That is coming up in a moment here on the Future, Faster. 

This is the Future, Faster, a sustainable agriculture podcast by Nutrien Ag Solutions. I'm Dusty Weis, along with Sally Flis here today, and we're joined by Lyle Benjamin, a crop consultant at Nutrien Ag Solutions out in Montana. So, Lyle, thank you for joining us.

Lyle Benjamin:

Thanks a bunch, Dusty. I'm glad to be here. 

Dusty Weis:

Lyle, to get us kicked off here, can you tell us a little bit about your background, your role with Nutrien Ag Solutions and the type of geography that you tend to out there in the mountain west? 

Lyle Benjamin:

Sure. I farmed for about 17 years before I left the farm and came over to Nutrien. That was about three years ago. I'm in North Central Montana, which is a dry land, small grains geography. We operate with six to 10 inches of rainfall a year. It's a fairly arid environment. Historically, we would be wheat fallow over the last, I suppose, a hundred years or so. In recent years we've started to bring in pulses and oilseeds into that rotation, probably in the last 10 years or so. It's been an interesting time to be both in my prior career farming and now on the ag input side as a crop consultant and working with growers to see how these new rotations fit into their acres and how we can make things work together synergistically across those crops. It's been a lot of fun. 

Dusty Weis:

As I understand it, your family has actually been out on that piece of land there for a little more than a hundred years now. Can you tell us a little bit more about your family's ties to Montana and what you love about it? 

Lyle Benjamin:

We left a really good farm country in Missouri back in the 1890s, bounced around a little bit before we landed here in 1911. We've homesteaded at that time. My brother is still on that original half section homestead in the hundred years since we were typically that we follow rotation in the last 15 or so years. Part of the family has gone into the organic side and has adopted various of these pulses and oilseeds as part of that organic side of things. We've been, maybe not on the leading edge of things, but we've certainly had our finger on the pulse of where things are going. We've seen different sides of this dry land, small grains evolution as it's rolled forward. We were one of the earlier adopters of chem fallow farming back in the late eighties, that rolled ironically enough into the organic side of things, and now here I am 20 years later as an agronomist selling chemical ag inputs and synthetic fertilizer inputs to all the neighbors. Its kind of going full circle. 

Sally Flis:

Lyle, I've been out to visit you a couple of times and you've toured me around a bunch of the farms and a bunch of the country out there. One of the things we've talked to your growers about is our Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes Program. I wanted to get some insight from you about why this was a program that worked for your growers, and the good, the bad, the ugly, what you're thinking about going forward with the program as well. 

Lyle Benjamin:

Sally, this has been a really interesting opportunity. I would say the timing has been interesting for us. The Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes is essentially a nitrogen reduction initiative that Nutrien has put together and rewards farmers for, on one side, reducing nitrogen and on the other side, adopting some practice changes or input changes that allow us to more efficiently fertilize our fields. When this program rolled out here, we were in the midst of historically high fertilizer prices, particularly on the nitrogen side, and so it was kind of a natural fit for us to go to farmers and say, "Hey, we'll pay you an amount of money if you'll reduce your nitrogen by this percentage." The guys would say, "That's a no-brainer, we are already going to reduce our nitrogen anyway and you're going to pay us to do that? This is good." 

Dusty Weis:

That's kind of a win-win. 

Lyle Benjamin:

Yeah, I mean how often does that happen in the farming game? 

There was some neat timing there. Since that time that market has kind of averaged out, but guys are still looking at this and saying, we've got this relationship where for a small practice change that makes some sense to us, we can offset a little bit of our input bill with the company, at the end of the year our bill drops down a little bit and it's for something that wasn't hard to do. That's kind of been the conversation that we've had with growers on the Sustainable Nitrogen Outcome side of the portfolio and it's been a good one to have.

It rolled out pretty successfully with some larger growers. Some of the smaller growers have also adopted it. It scales up and down pretty readily with farm size and with farm practices and different things like that. It's been a good program to roll out here. As I've said before, our environment is a very dry, relatively low yield environment. Input costs are a major part of the profitability ratio on these operations, and so being able to go to a farmer and say, Hey, here's a couple bucks an acre that we can just throw around for a practice change. That can have a fairly large effect on profitability, and bottom line, financing for these guys, so it's an easy conversation to have. 

Sally Flis:

I know there's been lots of challenges in the program as well. What would be your recommendations to other crop consultants in the field, of things to be prepared for or things that'll help speed the process up as they think about enrolling growers in Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes? 

Lyle Benjamin:

The key to remember, this is the growers program. They know their fields, they know their practices, they know their situation far better than you will, even as a closely connected agronomist to that operation, and Nutrien is paying this grower to do this program and to provide these details, so throw those details back on the grower to produce. First year I rolled this out, I felt like I was doing my growers a service as a crop consultant to fill out all the forms and do all the work for this program. The first year it was a fairly small rollout, so it was easy. That snowballed the next year, had a lot more acres to deal with, and so there was a little bit of a struggle there. The lesson I've learned in that is, throw this back on the growers, you're going to pay them pretty good money to provide details of their operation. 

If you look at it as an per hour time in their office chair, they're getting paid really well to provide details on their operations, so don't be afraid to tell the growers it's going to take you a half a day or a day to enter this information in, and this is probably going to be the best per hour wage you receive all year, is this program. Once you've got their maps in the system, that's an agronomist side piece, the rest of it can pretty easily roll onto the grower. Agrible has evolved as a software tool. This year, there's been a major rollout of some very exciting new changes that have simplified data entry and have streamlined a lot of the processes. It's easier now than it's ever been for growers to do their own data entry and to provide their own details for this program.

Dusty Weis:

I should say, I think we might have buried the lead here too, Lyle, because you've met with pretty great success getting new prospects to become current customers and enroll in these programs. Over 150,000 acres of enrollment across your territory. How has the process been, going out and talking with growers about these opportunities to you? What do they say when you first approach them? 

Lyle Benjamin:

Some of my growers are very interested in the sustainability side of this. The money is a little bit secondary. These guys are trying to do things on their farm that are maybe a little bit research oriented. They're trying to figure out what the next new practice is going to be that is going to grab that next piece of profitability. We got some guys that are very altruistic and they're trying to make their farm not just sustainable, but they want a legacy with their farm, that is, after they're gone, people can say that farm was better after he left than it was when he started. That's an interesting conversation to have for these guys that are really trying to improve their soil health, reduce their erosion, improve their soil tilth, or water holding capacity. There's all these different things that are going on within their soil and they're trying to make that of improved resource. 

That's a lot of fun to interact with those growers that are really trying to push things forward in a positive way. I would say this area, it's a tough place to farm, and so some growers have really latched onto the payment per acre side of this piece where it's very much, you pay me, I'll do this thing and this'll be good for me. It's a little different conversation with those growers than it is with the more resource oriented growers. But it's a few questions in a conversation. You can kind of see where a guy is coming from and it's pretty easy to position this program.

Sally Flis:

Lyle, one of the things that's a part of this program is, as you mentioned, the rate reduction piece, which oftentimes we get mixed reactions to, right? How do you respond to some of that stuff in the field and talk through that conversation with the grower on how fine-tuning things like nitrogen management is going to help provide a better quality and hopefully better yield for them, and why we're interested in it as Nutrien? And then what are the practices you've talked with growers about, to achieve that rate reduction as they go out and try and implement the program in the field? 

Lyle Benjamin:

Part of what I reached back to is my experience on my own farm, the things that worked for me, because even without this Nutrien Sustainable Nitrogen Outcome Program, I was always looking to reduce my input cost or at least drive my inputs to the best use on the acre. There's an important distinction there. So, I could reach back to that experience and say, look, are you doing a soil sample on your whole farm or are you doing soil samples on every quarter or half section? What's that look like? Where do you need your nitrogen? It may not be that your total farm nitrogen use goes down, but we might be putting nitrogen in the wrong places on your farm. There's some acres that don't need as much. There's some acres that need more. We need to fine-tune that. We need to chase that, the right time, the right place, the right quantity, the right source. The four Rs. 

I found on my own farm that it was once I started soil testing in much smaller units, my soil testing, which felt expensive, was one of the cheapest things I was doing, that was changing how and where I was putting my nitrogen. I've reached back to that and say, let's look at some soil testing, let's look at some data-driven management tools that we can use that will help us to fine-tune this, from there, we can start to look at that reduction piece and say, okay, are we overall, are we putting too much nitrogen down? Okay, maybe we're not there, but let's look at your variable rate. Are you doing liquid or are you doing dry or are you doing anhydrous? Let's look at your picture and let's look at how we can either spread out your nitrogen so that we're spoon-feeding that crop at the time that it needs it and the time that it needs more of that resource.

Let's keep in mind, while we're doing this, how we fit into your operational realities. Some growers don't have high clearance sprayers, they're not equipped to do three trips of liquid fertility over their acre, or they don't have the time. I mean, it's things like this, you kind of get a feel for their operations and narrow down what can work or what just won't work for that grower. But what we're finding is, in these conversations as you talk about how to spread out that fertilizer, how to lower that fertilizer use, and then speaking as a salesman how to position products that will allow us to more efficiently utilize that nitrogen resource, all these things come together in a really nice package. It's a conversation that you have, and some of these growers, it might be two or three conversations that you have before you get to that yes answer, but it's all just part of the sales process, figuring out what the needs of the grower are and then figuring out what you can provide to satisfy those needs. 

As a salesman that is also positioning this carbon program, you're a little bit selling and you're a little bit buying because you're trying to buy this sustainable piece from the farmer, and it's an interesting conversation to balance those things as you visit with the grower. There's always the question that comes up on the carbon credit side of this, is this price going to go up? Is it going to go down? You're balancing those things in the conversation as well.

Sally Flis:

I'd really love to hear how you feel about answering the question from a grower of, why is Nutrien that makes and sells fertilizer bringing me a program to pay me put on less fertilizer? 

Lyle Benjamin:

Sally, I remember, I think the first time I met you, we were down in New Orleans at a carbon sustainability thing, one of the first times we traveled. When growers ask about why Nutrien is doing what they are with the nitrogen reduction piece, I point back to that conversation that we had down there where we were on the end of America's river system. We were talking about the nitrogen flow through the Missouri and Mississippi River systems and how all that excess nutrient load is impacting the Gulf of Mexico. That was a pivotal conversation for me to be part of because it really drives what we're trying to do, which is ultimately be sustainable and ultimately produce better results for the environment by reducing our nitrogen load. That's the conversation that I reach back to and I say, look, this is where we're trying to go at. There's no big secret here. We're just trying to be a better steward of our environment from a company perspective and also from a farm perspective. That footprint is spread out over so many of the farms that we service. 

Dusty Weis:

You know Lyle, I get the sense just from talking to you here that you are someone who is very clearly in tune with the needs and the thoughts and the practices of the growers that you talk to, and that's clearly a product of just spending a lot of time out in the field and talking with them too. But you told me before that your territory, even though where you're based, Shelby, Montana is located just what? 40, 50 miles from the Canadian border? 

Lyle Benjamin:

Yeah, we're about 35 miles from the line. 

Dusty Weis:

Being as you're so close to the Canadian border there, I would imagine that you do get to talk to some Canadian growers as well. I guess, what I'm wondering is, do you see a lot of differences in practices or attitudes on one side of the border versus the other? 

Lyle Benjamin:

There is some difference. The Canadians have typically been very good at raising oilseeds and pulses. That has a pretty direct tie to the way that their farm policy, worked up until about 2014 or so, whether where they had a grain marketing board and the guys needed marketing flexibility, and the only way to do that was to raise crops that were not grain market board associated, which is pulses and oilseeds. The Canadians had a 20 or 30 year head start on the northern plains as far as adopting these crops and figuring out how to optimize them and really thrive with these crops. If we have any questions on how to raise a pea or a chickpea or a lentil or canola, mustard, those sorts of things, we look pretty quickly to Canada and ask our Alberta neighbors, hey, how do you do this? 

What do we need to be thinking about? What has worked, what hasn't worked? Disease, pressure, seed count, seed rate, seed depth, chemistry, all these things. There's a lot of conversations that we can have with our Alberta counterparts, because they've already figured this stuff out and they're just on the other side of the 49th parallel, so it's pretty easy to do. We rely a lot on Alberta universities and some of their trial data for optimizing what we're doing down here just because they have so much more experience with these crops over the last several decades, and we're just in the last 10 years getting our hands kind of wrapped around them. There's a lot of conversation there. The Canadians have a real strong short line presence up there, so it's easy to find equipment that's really optimized for these crops. The border is no problem to cross, so it's easy to go up there and get equipment, drop into their ag shows, go to their field days, this sort of thing, and exchange that information.

Sally Flis:

You've worked with a lot of different members of our team in order to get these acres across the line, get the data collection, get things signed up, learn about the programs, what have been really the key resources from our team that have helped you be successful in the field, and what else could you maybe have used or would look for in the future to continue to grow the program? 

Lyle Benjamin:

No, I couldn't do what I have done without the backside support of the Nutrien digital support team. It's been just critical. I mean, you don't handle 150,000 acres of data on your own. It's just critical to have that support team. I make calls to Chicago, I make calls to Los Angeles, I make calls to Fort Collins, and it's each of those people, the Melissas and Sophias that are on the backsides of those calls are helping me every day rolling out this program and interfacing with growers on the backsides of these different things. It's been a lot of fun working with that support team, which is invisible to the grower essentially, but they're critical to our success. 

Dusty Weis:

Well Lyle, a 150,000 acres enrolled is a heck of a milestone, and so our hats are off to you for that, there's certainly a lot of great lessons that you've put down here that other crop consultants and growers can learn from. We appreciate your taking the time to share those with us. Lyle Benjamin, crop consultant for Nutrien Ag Solutions. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Future, Faster. 

Lyle Benjamin:

It was a lot of fun to be here with you, Dusty. It was good to see you again, Sally. 

Dusty Weis:

That is going to conclude this edition of The Future, Faster, the Pursuit of Sustainable Success with Nutrien Ag Solutions. New episodes arrive every month, so make sure you follow us in your favorite app and join us again soon. Visit futurefaster.com to learn more. The Future, Faster podcast is brought to you by Nutrien Ag Solutions with executive producer Connor Irwin and editing by Will Henry, and it's produced by PodCamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses podcampmedia.com. For Nutrien Ag Solutions, thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.