We are proud to announce that our farming film, Last Stand, and three related short videos took home Telly Awards this year. The Telly Awards honor excellence in video and television across all screens.

Last Stand, a movie about the joys and challenges of being a farmer that was filmed during the 2020 growing season, was recognized with both a Silver and a Bronze Telly. It is available to watch as both a short, 20-minute version and an in-depth, hour-long film.

The other Telly Winners were the short videos Religious Experience, You'd Never Go Without It, and The Whole World Can Benefit, which can be viewed below. All of the winning videos were produced by the team at Light Work Productions.

Religious Experience

Silver Winner: Non-broadcast - Lifestyle Category

American farmers talk about farming, family and what drives them every day. "I love farming. I still get up every morning excited to go outside and to do what I do. I don't think everybody can say that," says Heath Cutrell, who farms in Virginia and North Carolina. "The reward is the lifestyle," says Don Stall, who farms in Michigan. "I produce something that's tangible...and I see my efforts paying off. When you harvest and the yields are big, it's very satisfying."

Accomplish MAX, a next-generation biocatalyst that provides nutrient efficiency and crop stress tolerance benefits, is now available from Loveland Products through Nutrien Ag Solutions retail locations. It is designed for use with in-furrow starters, 2x2 placement of liquid fertilizers, and liquid sidedress applications.

Accomplish MAX is a proprietary combination of proven Accomplish biocatalyst technology, which growers have used for over a decade to improve nutrient mineralization and uptake on millions of acres across the United States, and cutting-edge kelp technology designed to enhance crop tolerance to abiotic stressors such as cold temperatures, drought and fertilizer salts. 

Key benefits of Accomplish MAX:

• Increases nutrient availability and uptake by mineralizing nutrients in the soil
• Improves plant tolerance to abiotic stresses such as cold temperatures and salinity from commercial fertilizers
• Enhances overall plant performance to help growers reach their yield potential

Farmers have a story to tell, and we wanted to capture it. During the 2020 growing season, Agricen hired a film crew to document the experiences of growers from four different farm operations in the United States. The result is Last Stand, a movie that follows some of America's top farmers as they try to grow the highest yields possible in a season full of challenges. The film can be watched by visiting LastStand.ag.

“While you can never predict what the growing season will be like, the 2020 season certainly did manage to throw many surprises into the mix. Excessive rain and hurricanes, the historic derecho in Iowa and across the upper Midwest – and that’s just the weather,” says Michael Totora, president and CEO of Agricen. “We think this is an important film that not only gives viewers a unique glimpse into the lives of the featured farmers, but also into the lives of farmers across the U.S. in 2020.”

Jeff van Kalker, a tested operations and supply chain innovator, has joined Agricen as Director of Operations. In his new role, Jeff is responsible for overseeing safety, quality, capacity planning and logistics at the facilities where Agricen's biological and biochemical products are manufactured. 

Prior to joining Agricen, Jeff was director of operations at Ecolab, a global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services, where he developed multiple new products and product lines that significantly increased revenue and profitability.

We are happy to welcome Smrithi Rajagopal as Agricen's Solutions Innovation Manager. 

Smrithi will focus on determining the feasibility of commercializing new and emerging technologies, working with different stakeholders to identify customer needs and validate business and technical requirements for targeted plant health solutions. She will also manage and lead multidisciplinary project teams to advance the development and market introduction of new plant health products and technologies. 

With plant health innovation at the core of our business, we are pleased to announce that John Wolf has been appointed as Senior Director of Innovation. In this role, John will define, identify, and lead new innovation initiatives and strategies, with a focus on developing new technologies to improve plant health in agriculture and related industries.

This year, Agricen celebrates 20 years of agricultural technology research, discovery and innovation aimed at sustainably improving crop yields. Two decades is no small feat in the agribusiness industry, and it's an even bigger achievement in our sector, focused on agricultural biostimulants and biologicals.

This sector has made huge strides since we were founded in 1998 in Pilot Point, Texas. When we began, there was a general skepticism about biological solutions for agriculture. This was driven in part by a lack of knowledge about how the science had begun to advance—moving beyond "bathtub brews" to advanced, quality controlled products with claims that could be supported by field and university data.

We're happy to announce the hiring of Scott Lay as director of business development at Agricen. In his new role, Scott will focus on developing plant health technology partnerships and collaborations in emerging market segments and regions. 

Agricen and Taranis, a precision agriculture company, have received a grant from the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation to collaborate on a project to advance and commercialize a new precision agriculture system for abiotic stress detection and prevention in row crops. 

Abiotic stresses are environmental or physical impacts on a plant (e.g., drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, nutrient deficiency), and result in billions of dollars of lost crop value each year. The Agricen/Taranis collaboration will address this agricultural challenge by creating a solution that merges the Taranis platform—which incorporates field imaging technology and a deep learning algorithm—with Agricen’s proven biostimulant technologies.

By Brian Cornelious, PhD

According to the most recent Ag Census data published in 2012, the U.S. has just over half a million beginning farmers. That may sound like a big number, but it’s actually 20 percent fewer than was reported in the 2007 census. Developing the next generation of American farmers is critical to ensuring that we are prepared to meet all of our agricultural needs in the decades ahead.

To encourage the next generation to make farming their career, we need to make sure that rural America remains economically viable so that it is not only an attractive place to raise crops, but also a desirable place to raise families.