Should Agribusiness Make Talent or Buy It?

Agriculture's labor problem is chronic. But attention is focused on the hands in the field, even while another talent crisis looming, and new tech and tools (even AI) seem unlikely to solve it. 

Today, hosts Sarah Mock and Trey Malone join experts Jay Akridge, Aissa Good, and Brenna Ellison to dig into why agribusiness is chronically short on skilled talent, and lay out a practical framework that anyone from farmers to agribusiness executives can use to determine how best to close that gap.

You'll walk away with a better understanding of:

• What a 100,000-graduate-a-year gap in agribusiness management means for how farms and firms should be investing in people now, even when budgets are tight.
• How to use the "make vs. buy" framework — plus two overlooked options, "bot" and "borrow" — to decide whether a role should be filled by training existing staff, hiring externally, automating, or contracting out.
• Why soft skills like communication, grit, and self-motivation are becoming just as critical to agribusiness hiring as technical expertise.

Agribusiness Blueprint is brought to you by Purdue Center for Food and Agricultural Business: agribusiness.purdue.edu. To learn more, follow The Center for Food and Agribusiness on LinkedIn.

Agribusiness Blueprint is supported in part by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Award No. 2022-68006-36433.

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

Farmers and ranchers are no stranger to the question of whether they should make something or buy it.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

If I'm a farmer, I'm gonna say, well, I guess I could fix my tractor, but it's gonna take a lot of time. It's gonna take a lot of work. Maybe I'll get it right, but maybe I'll mess it up too. So what I'm gonna do is I won't make that work myself. I will buy that labor from the mechanic that works in the John Deere dealership down the street.

SPEAKER_06 0:26

Fixing a tractor is one make versus buy situation, but there are countless more. Every year, farmers have to decide if they'd rather do their own accounting, marketing, agronomics, and real estate deals, or hire someone to help them get the job done. Plus, once they've decided to say, do their own accounting, they then have to decide should I use an off-the-shelf software or build something custom for myself? Even in the shop, farmers make decisions on whether having a custom tool built to their exact specifications is worth the time it takes to create it. One area where this question often comes up without anyone really noticing is in the HR department. In other words, should we be growing the people we need internally, or should we try to hire from outside the company to meet our needs? So today we're tackling how farms and firms are making or buying the talent they need in a fast-changing world. Here on Agribusiness Blueprint. This is Agribusiness Blueprint, a limited series podcast about American agriculture's most impossible challenges and the agribusiness leaders who solved them. You're here with me, independent ag journalist Sarah Mock, and my co-host Trey Malone, Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics and the Bulgy Chair at Purdue University. And today we're talking talent in agriculture. For years, the industry has been obsessed with the labor problem, especially for so-called low-skilled jobs, whether hired hands that drive truck and scout fields, or seasonal folks that prune and harvest. But this focus has obscured the fact that from family farms all the way up to the biggest agribusinesses, skilled and experienced talent is also undersupplied despite high demand. That's why today we're talking about the current state of the ag talent pipeline, what will shape it moving forward, and how farms and agribusinesses alike can use the buy versus make framework to understand their talent needs and start investing in the workforce that will help them succeed going forward. We have to start today with understanding the current state of the ag workforce. And the fact is that over the last 50 years, working in agriculture has changed a lot. And we have the data to prove it, thanks to a little-known survey that's been around for the last four plus decades.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

As Purdue's worked with the USDA about every five years to take the pulse of the employment opportunities, both supply and demand.

SPEAKER_06 3:04

That's Jay Ackridge, a trustee chair in the Department of Ag Economics at Purdue. He's talking here about the USDA Employment Opportunities Report, which offers some clear indication of the biggest trends that have shaped talent availability and need in the agribusiness world in recent decades.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

You go back to the early 80s, you had a lot of one, two, five location operations, a co-op that would have two or three places. And the scale and scope of those set of decisions was quite focused on what's going on locally. And now you roll up hundreds of those locations into organizations that somebody's responsible for, ultimately the performance of the whole group.

SPEAKER_06 3:56

For anyone paying attention, this growth in the size and scale of firms is nothing new. But we rarely talk about what this actually looks like for the people, the employees, managers, and strategists within these organizations who help drive the operation's success. So we know how agribusinesses have changed, but how have agribusiness jobs changed as a result?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Maybe the most fundamental thing is increasing scale of operation has led to increasing specialization of these positions. So the focus of the individuals involved in some sense is narrowed because they have to know more about each area that they're involved in. Same things happen with respect to the sophistication of marketing sales, the tools they have available to work with, the size of the producers that they're engaged with, the scale of the decisions that are involved. The level of sophistication and the ultimate impact of decisions, I think, has changed dramatically.

SPEAKER_06 4:50

In other words, this dramatic change in the scope and scale of agribusiness has put serious pressure on the people actually doing the work.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

As these firms have consolidated, so too has the roles of a manager, right? So the research that we've done at Purdue with the USDA says that we're like a hundred thousand undergrads a year short of what the job demands actually are in the world of agricultural agribusiness management. Now, those jobs themselves look very different now than what they did in the 80s. If I had a nickel for every time somebody said, you know, I wish in my Ag Econ undergrad I had taken more classes on HR or managing people, as opposed to managing a farm. Which not to say that managing the farm doesn't matter, but this is a completely different skill set that does not necessarily translate the way that it did in the 80s. It's not even a kids these days kind of thing. It's that it's that the structure of the job itself has shifted dramatically.

SPEAKER_06 5:51

As we've discussed in previous episodes, understanding the culture of agriculture has long been a defining characteristic of those in the agribusiness workforce. Seed companies, equipment companies, even ag inflected financial institutions and tech companies want to see that their employees can seamlessly integrate with their farmer and rancher customer base. In the past, the basic litmus test was simple. Did you grow up on a farm? If so, you were assumed to get it. And most other skills, from sales and marketing to accounting and compliance, were assumed to be teachable as long as that basic cultural competency was there. Today, the hire the farm kids mentality is not enough to keep agribusiness competitive in an increasingly globalized and sophisticated world. It's not just conventional American farmers that ag company employees have to meet, negotiate with, and manage. It's also corporate colleagues, including those in other industries. It's the public, it's regulators and international stakeholders. And successfully doing this work increasingly requires advanced and specialized skills. This is where many agribusinesses get stuck. They already have staff on hand, but the tasks that need doing are changing. So what do you do? Do you try and get your current employees trained up to do more of these new tasks? Or do you just hire new employees who already possess those skills? Is one option better than the other? How do we know? This is a classic make versus buy dilemma. And the good news is there's a framework for that.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

The make versus buy framework is a way to really think through what are the things you should do and what are the things that you can probably have some other expert do for you. This is econ 101 in the sense that the way that an economy grows is through two things: specialization, the division of labor, and trade. That's it. You need to specialize in specific production, and you need to find somebody else who can create for you what you don't need to create yourself. So one of the big things that you have to really explore when you're deciding whether or not you should make something is if it actually protects your own comparative advantage, your own skill set. The phrase that comes to mind is your crown jewels. If the job that you're trying to evaluate is close to your crown jewels, then you probably should do that thing. You don't want to outsource your crown jewels. But if it's something that's kind of on the periphery, like it's not the thing that you're most passionate about, it's not the thing that really sustains you, it's probably wise to start looking at buying some of that.

SPEAKER_06 8:40

So when facing a make versus buy dilemma, this is the foundational question. How central is the thing that I'm deciding to either make or buy to my competitive advantage? In other words, how close is this new task to the talents and services that set my organization apart in the marketplace? Here's a few examples. If I'm a top-performing farmer raising grain in the Midwest, pulling in top yields, and well known for my skill growing highly efficient and profitable crops, when it comes to accounting, I'm probably safe to either hire an accountant in-house or contract with one externally. This is a good idea because my comparative advantage, my crown jewels, as Trey would say, is my agronomic expertise, not my knowledge of tax law. On the other hand, if I'm a major ag equipment company that's recognized in the industry for reliable and long-lasting products that my customers love, acquiring a move fast and break things young startup team to build the next generation of my company's tools might be a risky bet. If my team's ability to create and sell functional and reliable products is a key driver of my business, hiring talent that might not value that could put those competencies and our reputation at risk. Taking the second example, where buying talent might not be the best option, what might it look like to make talent in that situation instead?

SPEAKER_02 10:10

That's effectively how you would train people inside your organization to handle some new task. You could try to make that talent internally by saying, I'm gonna go get executive education, we're gonna go get training for our people so that they are people that we already have can go do that thing that is new and exciting and everything else. That's making the talent inside your operation.

SPEAKER_06 10:34

Again, I'm sure that to those who do training regularly or have tried to carry out training in their organization, this is easier said than done. That's why we decided to call on an expert.

SPEAKER_05 10:45

So, how can we help organizations and people get through those valleys and peaks, if you will, in terms of the knowledge that they need?

SPEAKER_06 10:54

Meet ASA Good, the managing director of the Center for Food and Agricultural Business at Purdue, who spent some 20 years helping companies invest in their people. Over that time, as changes in the industry have accelerated, ACE has been in the trenches, helping people inside growing and complex organizations learn new skills while keeping the farmer and the culture of agriculture in mind. And this is getting harder because it's not just the nature of business and the global economy that are changing.

SPEAKER_05 11:24

What is shifting is the farmer, right? So, how do we help these organizations continue to stay with or ahead of the sophistication of their customer? I think the skills are still the same, but it's maybe prioritizing them is a little bit different, right? And we spend a lot of time working with salespeople. And the evolution of sales is definitely changed over the last 20 to 25 years. And so that proactive, really focused on understanding the customer, not just coming with products and here's what I have, let me take your order, type of thing is really the shift that we're seeing today. And it's not easy, right? We've come through years where selling was a little bit easier than it is today. You have to be able to communicate the value that you as a salesperson, but also your organization brings, and competition is fierce.

SPEAKER_06 12:24

Sales calls might be one place where changes in ag talent and in the culture of agriculture collide, but it's not the only agribusiness role that's demanding a completely new skill set today.

SPEAKER_05 12:35

Confidence in financial acumen is always one that is high on the list because you get folks that have come into a role, they get pushed into the next level management position where they have PL responsibility, those types of things. It's really the soft skills as well, right? So thinking about leadership, communication, and strategy. So we get into kind of the grind of very task-driven roles. And so folks get blocked into, okay, this is the task that I have at hand. I'm gonna check this box and I'm successful. And then it's okay, how do we get to that critical thinking piece?

SPEAKER_06 13:19

Whether you're in the office or the field, tools like AI are changing working conditions and even daily activities all the time, making these critical thinking skills even more paramount. Some definitely believe that critical thinking is either a skill you developed when you were young or you simply don't have it. But Ace's experience helping organizations foster more innovative thinking and agility is that critical thinking is not so black and white. It can be developed and the conditions within the organization can have a big impact.

SPEAKER_05 13:52

A lot of it depends on the organization leadership, right? And how much do they empower those on their team to make decisions? Will you see the different levels of critical thinking, right? If it's organizations where the leader rules with a heavy fist, I think some of that critical thinking kind of gets squashed.

SPEAKER_06 14:13

Empowering employees to make their own decisions is an important first step in developing critical thinking skills. But from ACE's perspective, it's not enough to just give employees the space to learn and grow. Organizations also have to proactively buy in to the learning process.

SPEAKER_05 14:31

When you have leaders that come in and participate, not just sit in the back like the review board, but a group of leaders that come in, sit down, and are actively engaged and participating and having conversations, that's when we see the most success, right? Because it's, oh, everybody's bought in. It's not just another check the box training that I have to go to. And those that are engaged, that are following up with the folks that have gone through this and having conversations to say, tell me about what you learned. What are you going to do differently? How is this working? Whatever it may be, it's that engagement pre, during, and post those experiences that drives the behavior change and really the return on learning.

SPEAKER_06 15:19

And then, of course, after the expectations are set and the classes attended comes, in some ways, the hardest part of all making sure what your people learn sticks.

SPEAKER_05 15:30

Scott Downey will talk about the church camp effect, right? Where we go to church camp for a week and everybody's yay, Jesus, and then they go back to their evil ways when they get home. That's what we don't want, right? We want to have an outcome out of an experience where there is practical application of tools that they can put into place right away.

SPEAKER_06 15:52

For any given organization, all of this can be a big investment. This is the cost of making your talent rather than buying it. But doing so also comes with some substantial benefits, not least of which is that in some areas, there's simply no other alternative.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

And ultimately, if you can't find talent in that space, then you better figure out how to make it. And that's probably true in a lot of rural places, right? So I think the make side is valuable for rural agribusinesses when you're saying, we found people that are willing to live here and are excited to be a part of our community. We need to train those people so that they can handle these things.

SPEAKER_06 16:30

One of the more overlooked returns to the investment of making talent is that your organization itself may have hidden wells of talent that you don't know about. Talent pools that can be unlocked simply by getting people in the room together.

SPEAKER_05 16:46

If you have folks from all over the organization and it's a big global company, I may not know what supply chain's doing because I'm in regulatory or something. I don't know. Things like that where they're learning about their organization. So then they have a resource within their organization that they didn't have before, even though they've worked for the same company for 10 years. This is the first time that their paths have crossed.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

A lot of it's regional learning, right? Somebody's had this experience in California. They haven't had the chance to talk to somebody about it in Mississippi, but it's a similar experience, or it's there's something that they can learn from each other that otherwise there would be no way for them to communicate off the cuff like that. Like how common it is that the organization itself needs a hub where they can come have this conversation.

SPEAKER_06 17:39

Despite all the benefits of making talent, plenty of organizations still choose not to invest. And though this can help organizations save money, especially in the short term, research suggests that these organizations often pay for it in the long term.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

So we've done a fair amount of research on what motivates employees to stay. What are the what are your high potential people really looking for in their roles? And ultimately, what matters as a manager is to understand exactly what it is that that person is looking for. And so to make sure that you're really good to your people. This is the crux of any type of decision that that I think should come across your desk. If you think about them as talent and not just as labor, you immediately recognize that losing that talent matters a lot. And trying to hide that talent under a bushel basket is a good way to lose them. I mean, you want your people to at least be approached to get poached because that means they're good. Right. If nobody's ever asked for your people before, it means you probably need to train your people better. I mean, ultimately, like you should be targeting that you are the best of your employees, and so you have the best employees. Right. That should be the strategy that I think makes the most sense for talent management.

SPEAKER_05 18:52

There are some organizations that just don't invest in people, right? And those are the ones that probably are not hitting the top of the performance list. And they're the ones that will always cut the training and development budget first. Those organizations, however, that do invest in people, even in the downtimes that like the ones that we've been going through, are the ones that when we are coming back up, are gonna come up and out faster and at a higher performance level. This is stuff that we've seen over time because they're preparing them going forward. Instead of saying, okay, we're just gonna panic and not gonna do anything except for what we've been doing. Okay, well, everything else is changing around you and you're just staying constant, probably getting left behind. So those organizations that do continue to invest and push their employees, even in the downtimes, are the ones that we see have the most success.

SPEAKER_06 19:54

Whether you're developing future organizational leaders, growing current employees into new roles, or simply helping your rank and file stay on top of new tasks and tools, there are plenty of reasons to choose make in the buy versus make bargain. But no matter how invested a company is in making talent, all organizations eventually have to buy some too. A good chunk of the bought talent in the agribusiness world today is into junior roles, bringing in recent college grads and early career professionals. So, how should agribusinesses be evaluating the returns on this bought talent investment? That's after the break. Agribusiness Blueprint is brought to you by Purdue University's Center for Food and Agricultural Business. This year marks the center's 40th anniversary, and its mission remains the same. Connecting evidence-based insight with decisions agribusiness leaders make every day. From strategy and marketing to sales, finance, and risk management, the center helps organizations and professionals navigate what makes agribusiness fundamentally different. Learn more about the center's programs and research at agribusiness.purdue.edu. Now back to the show. When considering whether to make or buy talent, we've talked about one key criteria so far. How close the task to be done is to the competitive advantage or the crown jewels of your organization. But especially if you get into roles that might not be directly involved with your business's core competencies, there are some other criteria to consider too.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

There are two big questions that you have to answer for yourself. The first one is how much strategic value to your firm does that position require? So, how important is that role? So if we say that it's high, great. Maybe we should design a role and then go make it. Right? Question two How much talent is available in that space? If this is a pretty small labor pool, then you probably better start thinking more about training your own. People. And I think that honestly a lot of ag rolls live in that space. Now, if you say no to both, if the there's a low pool and there's low strategic value to the firm, maybe this is a space where you start thinking about automating it. Right. So we've talked about make versus buy. You could think about a bot, right? So maybe what we're actually going to try to look for is a way to shift the conversation away from even requiring somebody in that role. So if you've shopped at a Walmart anytime in the last 15 years, the role that really fits in that space, strategic value to the firm and also low talent availability, what happened in the checkout lanes, right? The other side to think about is urgency. So how urgent is this? Is there runway for me to be able to get ahead of this? If there's runway, then probably I should be thinking about making an inside. If there's not much runway, then I probably need to go find somebody with the skill set that already has developed as opposed to having to build it myself.

SPEAKER_06 22:57

These additional factors, the size of the available talent pool and the urgency of the need, help provide some further context for making the buy or make, or as Trey mentioned, automate decision. Though the size of the talent pool for any specific job title will vary, we actually know a lot about the size of the overall pool of talent in the agribusiness space, thanks to the work of Jay Ackridge and the USDA Employment Report. And the top line on that pool is right now and for the foreseeable future, it's quite shallow.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

The hard truth is that we operate in a thin market. As I mentioned before, there are something like 100,000 a year job gaps between what is actually asked for in the U.S. job market in agribusiness versus what's actually delivered. We're talking about a huge gap, even though agribusiness management is the third largest major in all U.S. colleges of agriculture. We are cranking out students that 50 years ago, by the way, the concept of agribusiness management did not exist. And we're still six figures short in terms of the demands for those positions.

SPEAKER_06 24:09

This talent drought is one of the key reasons that agribusinesses at all scales are increasingly looking to start buying talent as early as possible, often right out of these agribusiness programs. Brennan Ellison, professor and undergraduate coordinator at Purdue University, has been immersed in that transition for years.

SPEAKER_04 24:29

Something I really, in the last several years, want to model even more as I'm teaching seniors who are about to go out in the working world is your technical background might get you in the door, but how to function as a good human and working and collaborating with people, that's what gets you moving up the ladder.

SPEAKER_06 24:44

Brennan Works both directly preparing students to enter the agribusiness workforce and working with folks in the industry in order to better understand what they want from junior members of their team. And while students and industry alike cite a few common skills that are becoming increasingly important, things like programming in Python or using Salesforce, many of the tools that are proving most impactful to develop are actually way less technical.

SPEAKER_04 25:12

It sounds silly, but like email etiquette is a real thing, right? And so these students grew up in an age where you can just blast anything online and you can say what you want and you're mostly invisible, but like that doesn't really hold in the workplace. Your name's tied to that email and it's tied there forever. So really being thoughtful and thinking through the tone of the things that you say, but also the mediums in which you say them. And so do we actually practice weird emails that you might get? And what are you going to do? And so it's do you even want to respond with an email, or is this something where you go knock on their door or you ask for a call and okay, maybe we need to verbally talk about this, and then you send an email to follow up and confirm what happened.

SPEAKER_06 25:50

As Brenda suggests here, developing cogent communication skills can seem like a given for recent grads. But with as many as five generations of people currently in the workforce at the same time, and many different regional, state, and national cultures all at play as well, having employees who can effectively communicate and navigate conflict under these conditions is often the difference between getting things done and money made, and an organization floundering an internal gridlock. But on top of these soft skills, students are also developing those desirable critical thinking skills and being put in situations, especially with the rise of AI, where they have to use them in new and complex ways.

SPEAKER_04 26:33

It is harder to have when AI will do it for you. That's the thing. Even when you had to Google back in the day, you had to kind of think about it and ask the right question. And this one, it's really good, right? It can do a lot for you and do it pretty fast and oftentimes pretty accurately. So I think knowing how to responsibly use AI. So A, being transparent and owning when you use it, like not being ashamed of it, but also knowing when it is and is not appropriate to be using it. And so I think everyone has kind of different lines. So it's hard to teach the line when it feels so subjective in the first place. But I think those are real challenges that workplaces are having too. We're still experimenting, we don't know what we want them to do. And you're even seeing bigger companies like Amazon now pulling back. Okay, we gave them free reign. Now we're seeing it's expensive, it's costly, we're not sure what benefits we're getting. So they're trying to rein it in and be like, okay, we need to use it for good purposes or productive purposes.

SPEAKER_06 27:27

For new college grads navigating these transitions in real time, Brennan has seen that again, success often hinges on the soft skills, having agility, being adaptable, being curious and open-minded. These habits are often the difference between average and top performers. But they, among other skills, can be really hard to teach in a conventional academic program.

SPEAKER_04 27:50

Some of the other things that are hard are the things like grit, like not just giving up when someone tells you something's not right the first time, right? Sometimes just getting feedback that it wasn't where it needed to be can be really daunting. So I think one, knowing how to take it and not be just defeated over it, that was a skill to be developed. But I also think, again, knowing how to give feedback, that's actually really hard, right? But the other thing that I guess I would think of sometimes it feels like self-motivation is a lot harder than what it used to be. I feel like we see so many that are passionate, they're doing 10 different things, probably five too many, right? There's that group, and then there's the group that's just, I just want to skate by. And that's not everyone, that's not a lot. And so trying to figure out again, intrinsically, like how can you keep yourself interested, motivated, wanting to contribute. Those are things that I think sometimes we don't think about enough, but are important skills, that curiosity to keep yourself really making progress and being a useful contributor to your organization.

SPEAKER_06 28:51

Again, talking about quote unquote soft skills like grit and self-motivation may seem a little touchy-feely in this conversation about hard-nosed investment and tangible skills. But developing an employee's flexibility and willingness to get creative has very tangible outcomes. Like being able to staff those positions and offices that are in remote parts of the country or the world.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

It's a unique paradox, too, right? Like ag people tend to really value the place that they're from. That's partly why they ended up in agriculture. And yet, most of the high-quality ag jobs tend to be positions that require a little bit of moving. And so that's this challenge to match sometimes. I've worked with some ag firms where they say our best employees move about every three years, at least for the first 15 years of their career. That's a hard sell sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 29:46

Purdue, like many other top-tier ag programs, is adding to its programming to ensure that students get exposure to international cultures as well as to challenging interpersonal situations like negotiations and communicating across disciplines, income levels, race, and education. For some, this kind of scholastic diversity would seem to fly in the face of the stereotypical agribusiness hire, the farm kid immersed in the culture of agriculture. But what's becoming clear is that in the future, industry leaders will need to be conversant not just in the culture of agriculture, but in many other cultures as well. And people like Brennan have found that that's likely to be true, even if the job her student is angling for is back on the family farm.

SPEAKER_04 30:31

A lot of them want to go back and be involved in a family business. And the one thing is you need to formalize it. You need to ask your boss, your parents, whoever that may be, grandparents, what are my job duties? What are my expectations? And so I also try to encourage the students, the ones that are going into industry, have a sit-down with your manager and ask, what are the expectations or help me set some goals for this year? Because I don't think it should just be sit at the office for 80 hours to prove that you're there. You want to make sure that there's a path and that you know the goalposts that you're being measured on, right? That's important. But I think for a lot of students, it's hard to have those conversations and definitely with a family business, super hard, right? There's whole different sets of dynamics. But I just think you're so excited to get the job, you kind of don't really think about what's next. So going in with a plan to know what the expectations are. Some managers, the ones that are trained well, they know to do that. They know to have those check-ins. But the reality is everyone's had a bad manager or a manager that's just overwhelmed. Sometimes you've got to advocate for yourself and at least try to set up some guardrails in order to help you be successful and make sure that that manager who's overwhelmed isn't dreaming up the level of expectations in their head that you don't even know about, right? So sometimes you got to be proactive and having those conversations to make sure that you're playing on the same field.

SPEAKER_06 31:49

Maybe for some, training employees to be self-advocates and to be able to set clear parameters and boundaries for themselves feels uncomfortable. After all, part of the rationale of buying talent is that it's an investment in an employee's future potential. And if they're too focused on their own goals and personal development, they might end up taking that expertise you've helped develop to a competitor. But for some companies, especially smaller organizations like farms with less resources they're willing to risk on a new hire, there are other options.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

So you have your make decision, you have a buy decision, you have the bot decision. And then the last one that you're talking about is the borrow decision, right? So I'm not going to bring this in entirely, but I'm going to borrow that talent from somewhere else. And that borrow decision is actually pretty wise. When I think about all the farmers in my family, they're really good at the ag part and they really don't like their accounting. And so that's probably a space where it makes a lot of sense for those folks to borrow. I mean, and ultimately, maybe it is something that that is worth exploring, internalizing at some point. But the core consideration, I think, is to remember that you don't have to make it all. There are other ways to try to accomplish a task than you having to feel like you're Superman and getting it all done by yourself.

SPEAKER_06 33:11

The harsh reality of today's market conditions make it painful for many organizations to imagine finding a lot of resources to invest in growing their current talent pool or hiring on their next generation of leaders. But from Trey's research and his experience, it's the organizations that stay the course, even through the most painful markets, and continue to invest in their people who are the most successful in the long term. On a deeper level, even, the agribusinesses who follow this path have something in common. They think about their employees fundamentally differently.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

We talk about telling our story, we talk about the value of FFA, but we don't talk about the talent. In the world of research in agriculture, we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about labor as an input, but we don't talk about all of the unique skills that are required for any specific job. So step one to me is just think about your people as talent. Don't just think about them as labor. Step two is think about how do I create a better talent pool? How do I develop human capital? You identify the gap in your firm and you try to figure out how to develop your human capital, how to develop the potential for the people that you work with so that they become the talented people that you need to have accomplish whatever the new task might be.

SPEAKER_06 34:37

Whatever needs your organization currently has as far as talent, the framework we discussed today offers a simple and effective way to determine whether your best bet will be to make it, buy it, or even automate or borrow it. Of course, knowing which of these strategies will serve the company best is not the same as actually being able to execute on it. You may know that preserving institutional knowledge and growing the business's core competencies means your organizations should invest in team trainings. But if your executive team is not on board, it still might fail. On the other hand, you might know that a potential new hire who's just done in their application would help a team make huge strides on adapting to a new workflow without disrupting the culture. But if there's no budget for hiring, there's not much you can do. In those situations, at least this framework can help you or your HR collaborators build a cohesive, bottom line-driven argument for why these recommendations are a strong investment in the future success of the firm. And if you yourself are the decision maker, forever looking askance at some uppity employee who's always bugging you for more investment in your organization's talent, you can use this framework to find common ground around prioritizing possible activities and future hires. As the future becomes more uncertain, the importance of human talent, especially in industries like agriculture, only seems to be coming more important. AI is proving effective, though extremely costly, at automating some tasks, but many others, especially any that involve human interactions, will likely remain in human hands. And even some that can be done by AI may prove more cost effective when done by your team instead. Our aim here is simply to approach all of these decisions with a sharpened pencil and with clarity on the fact that, like everything else, you can't expect a return on talent without an investment. One investment that agribusiness has never been shy about making is in sales, but even that world is changing.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

What makes ag sales different than regular sales? Because understanding a farmer is very difficult.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Trying to discover what it is that the customer needs and wants, not just what they say they need and want.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

So in my sales area, the question you ask then is: okay, so what makes salespeople successful?

SPEAKER_06 37:11

Ag sales in the age of AI, that's next time on Agribusiness Blueprint. Agribusiness Blueprint is a production of Purdue University's Center for Food and Agribusiness. I'm your host, Sarah Mock, along with my co-host Trey Malone. The show is produced and mixed by me, Sarah Mock, with editing support from Trey Malone and Mike Bolgy. Additional support from the wider team at the Center for Food and Agribusiness. To learn more about programs, classes, and continuing education opportunities through the Center for Food and Agribusiness, visit our website at agribusiness.purdue.edu and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest news and updates. For specific questions about the show, contact Train Alone in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. Agribusiness Blueprint is sponsored in part by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive program of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, NIFA. Award number two zero two two six eight zero zero six three six four three three.