Early Days: The Foundation of Collaboration

20th Anniversary

Early Days: The Foundation of Collaboration

By Paul Schrimpf, Director of Marketing and Communications

Editor’s Note: Throughout 2025 we will share stories of the challenges and successes the organization experienced in the formation and development of AgGateway as part of our 20th anniversary celebration.

The emerging promise of digital connectivity across agriculture segments was just a gleam in the eye of industry leaders a couple of decades ago, but its potential to revolutionize the industry – and offer market dominance to the “winner” – drew significant attention and investment. Individual organizations pursued their own initiatives that they hoped would become industry standard, and the larger segments – crop protection, seed, and fertilizer – were trying to marshal their members to create standards for their own corners of the industry.

“Electronic business messaging in agriculture in the 1990’s and early 2000’s was a veritable field of silos,” says Brent Kemp, AgGateway President and CEO. “Ag chemicals had the most maturity in terms of implemented messages, followed by the crop nutrition segment. Seed companies wanted to make their supply and program processes electronic as well. And there were different associations focused on or planned for each.”

Ron Farrell, who retired from retailer Wilbur Ellis to start his own company, Farrell Growth Group, took on a second job as president of the crop protection industry’s electronic commerce collective called RAPID. From this perch, he could see the potential of a collective industry effort.

“He had the vision to ask the question ‘why are we doing the same thing in different places’ and, ‘Wouldn’t it be more efficient to do this work once, in one place?’” says Kemp. Farrell, along with Rod Conner from Southern States Cooperative, and Bruce Blitch, the first chief information officer at fertilizer manufacturer Tessenderlo Kerley, came together to begin the formative work that would become AgGateway.

Gaining trust was an enormous hurdle to getting people to the table, and Conner and Blitch did a lot of the early heavy lifting hosting meetings with organizations, selling the value of collaboration, and getting seed funding for the effort. “At a meeting in Minneapolis a group of companies agreed to throw money in, and we were able to move forward,” says Conner. Once enough support was secured from outside of RAPID, the new cross-segment organization – AgGateway – was officially launched.

The formative work required many hands to complete, but it was Farrell’s vision that kept the fledgling organization on the path. Kelly Farrell, Ron’s daughter, fondly recalls his dedication to improving the agriculture industry. “He was a visionary and a leader, and those are two skill sets that were, and are, essential for the CEO role of RAPID and then AgGateway. He was a consensus builder, and he had a gift for inspiring people to do work for the greater good.”