Foundation of Collaboration: AgGateway’s Superpower

20th Anniversary

Foundation of Collaboration: AgGateway’s Superpower

By Paul Schrimpf, Director of Marketing and Communications

One of AgGateway’s greatest – and maybe most underrated – strengths it’s developed over two decades of work is its foundation of collaboration. It’s a place where fierce competitors with a need to solve a vexing connectivity challenge can work together to discern a solution.

It certainly wasn’t easy. In its early days evolving from the crop protection focused organization called RAPID, AgGateway aimed to widen the tent and to open up the possibility of setting standards in other industry segments, in particular seed and crop nutrition.

Marilyn Hunter, a key leader and driver of this expansion into new frontiers for AgGateway, recalls that distributors were creating the demand for improving connections. “Manufacturers supported the work and incentivized adoption of crop protection standards and systems, but it was the distributors that drove the work on other opportunities such as seed,” says Hunter. “They were more willing to pay for it themselves because of the tremendous benefits that could be realized.”

“We had to do a lot of teambuilding work to break the ice and form a level of camaraderie, and the success we experiences formed the basis for all the work we would do going forward.”

As AgGateway looked to further expand its influence into other areas of the agriculture industry, this basis of collaboration served as a model for success. In 2011, Jeremy Wilson used the AgGateway formula to springboard the development of a coalition around connectivity in precision agriculture.

“At my first AgGateway meeting a group of us who were thinking about the possibilities in precision agriculture connectivity attended session and saw bitter competitors together in rooms hashing out common problems,” says Wilson. “And they were able to work together in a way that still let each of them have their own identity while bringing value to all customers. “At that time,” he continues, “the industry was all about making everything, forcing growers to use every piece of technology whether software or hardware.” The coming proliferation of FMIS deepened the struggle as people struggled to import data from disparate systems.

“I think the one way that AgGateway helped us was just demonstrating how competing interests across retail, distribution, and manufacturing could sit in a room together to solve real world problems to streamline their businesses,” says Wilson.

AgGateway also provided some of the tools needed to begin to document what the problems were, and how to begin to create and document solutions. And, it had the antitrust policies that the precision ag group needed to sit in the same room and solve problems.

As membership ranks filled with equipment, hardware, and software companies, it took some time before the precision ag mission was understood and fully embraced by the input focused AgGateway base. That experience is not ever far from Jeremy’s mind as new groups have entered AgGateway’s circle in search of guidance and solutions.

“This is why I stay really engaged with new segments that knock on our door, like animal health,” says Wilson. “They do belong under the tent and we have a lot to offer, but there’s a lot to work through. We can do great things and solve problems, but we must have the fortitude to keep to the grindstone, win over the naysayers, and do the work. AgGateway has been the place where this can happen for two decades now, and we still have much that we can accomplish.”