Three Takeaways from FarmCon

From The President

Three Takeaways from FarmCon, and What They Mean for AgGateway

By Brent Kemp, President and CEO

Just a couple of days after celebrating the turnover of the New Year, I boarded a plane for Kansas City to attend the FarmCon Conference. Billed as the “conference for creative minds in agriculture,” the panel discussions, keynotes, and breakout sessions covered topics as varied as U.S. agriculture policy, branding and marketing, communicating a legacy, the market outlook for the year ahead, and more.

I was fortunate to sit at a couple of different tables and spoke with farmers, grain elevator operators, and retailers to hear their stories, opinions, and thoughts. Several themes resonated as I consider AgGateway’s work in the year ahead.

First, all agreed that 2026 continues the trend of uncertainty at the farm level. Whether in terms of profitability, labor availability, or regulation and compliance, the operators agreed that “business as usual” offers no certainty of positive outcomes. They all agreed that investing in operational efficiency, developing new demand channels, and renewed engagement with legislators and regulators alike was in order.

Second, visibility into the operation of the farm business is key to understanding productivity and profitability. One speaker made the point that data of all kinds is required to build and understand the farm operation. As a dairy operator, he described using several AI agents in his operation to generate reports from data he manually extracts from his equipment. During a conversation afterwards, he suggested to me that technology is about six months away from being able to provide this kind of reporting to dairies overall – but also noted that he’s probably doing more with his data than 95% of operators.

Finally (for this article anyway), there was strong messaging that farm operations need to be thinking about ways to ensure ongoing financial and operational sustainability. The audience was largely comprised of forward-thinking operators, and so topics like investment instruments outside the farm’s assets and building community engagement around a brand were all welcomed.

Against this backdrop, AgGateway is well positioned to support the industry in thinking and doing work differently to the benefit of farms and farmers. Our members recognize that investments in connectivity, data identification and management, and finding new uses for existing messaging and information exchange build value.

This value is realized when orders and invoices flow between partners without human intervention. It is realized when a farmer can quickly and accurately record where specific products are planted and applied in the field, speeding reporting and yield/profitability calculations. It is realized when that farmer and downstream partners can share and exchange test data such as protein content, moisture, and other quality information to support a price premium for their product. AgGateway’s standards and tools, implemented and active, enable each of these scenarios.

AgGateway meetups, working groups, and committees are the places where conversations happen among the creative minds in ag technology and business. Like the operators I met in Kansas City, you all are the practical designers, developers, and implementers that see business challenges and have the commitment to solve them. Our conferences and virtual meetings in 2026 will be filled with the creativity and passion you bring to improve agriculture so that farms and farmers can continue to feed, fuel, and clothe the world. The challenges are real. So is our readiness to face them.

AI, next generation business message syntax, harmonization of standards, automatic data mapping, reference data access and maintenance are all on our work table for the new year. Which is most important to you, and how will you engage? I look forward to hearing from you and working with you to move the industry forward. Happy New Year! Let’s roll up our sleeves and get rolling.