What does ADT Certification mean to WinField United?

WinField United, the crop inputs and insights business of Land O’Lakes, Inc., works with nearly 1,300 locally owned and operated cooperative and independent agricultural retailers to help farmers responsibly unlock the greatest potential of every acre. An insights company with agriculture at its core, WinField United provides proven products, data, technology tools and agronomic expertise that turns even the smallest detail from the field into actionable, winning insight to help farmers achieve predictable, sustainable outcomes.

WinField United observed the evolution of data management in agriculture, and in 2016, they decided to develop their solution for easier management. “As digital tools have become more widely used in agriculture, it has become necessary that WinField United collect customer data. The nature and purpose of such data collection activities vary based on the digital tool and are detailed in the agreement(s) and policy(ies) applicable to each digital tool. With that said, in order to increase adoption of digital tools on the farm and to better enable retailers and farmers in finding valuable (quick) insights that allow them to take action, it is important that we not only engage in data collection, but also streamline the flow of such data to and between digital tools, which helps to address the inefficiencies of duplicate data entry,” explains Joel Wipperfurth, Ag Technology Marketing Lead.  “If a farming operation wants to utilize multiple digital tools, we don’t believe they should have to enter data multiple times.  That general principle led to our development of the Answer Tech Data Silo®, which allows us to collect data, share it between digital tools, and enable faster access to insights and help to streamline data entry.” Today, the Answer Tech Data Silo has nearly 10,000 farmers set up to share data with integrated partners. 

Questions from retailers and farmers about how their data is managed is what nudged WinField United to pursue ADT certification for Answer Tech. “We have high interest in transparency and openness around our intentions, and we understand there can be many questions around data. We also understand that many customer/farmers don’t know what questions to ask, so sharing our perspective and position will only help bring clarity to what might seem overwhelming and concerning to a customer/farmer,” explains Wipperfurth, “This certification seemed like a great way to share the fact that our intent is to leverage data to aid in decision making and help our customer/farmer understand what it means when they share that data with our network.”

When considering what ADT has done for their organization, WinField United emphasizes the simplicity of answering these questions. “We’ve had some retail owners ask about how their farmers’ data is used, like where it goes when it’s in our system and in our digital tools. ADT’s website and the questions we’ve answered as part of the certification allows us to point these retailers and farmers to a location to review and better understand our practices.” 

As WinField United simplifies farmers’ decision-making processes by bringing multiple data apps into one platform in Answer Tech, ADT simplifies communication about data management procedures by bringing answers to farmers’ questions into one notable certification. Sounds like a win for everyone.