Recently, Mosaic announced partnerships that will expand our product portfolio to better meet growers needs for improved soil health. Curt Woolfolk, Manager of Crop Nutrition Technologies, helps examine Mosaic’s current market position and provide insight into advanced crop nutrition and how that progresses soil health.

Why do you think customers choose Mosaic and Mosaic products?  
Retail customers respect Mosaic and recognize us as the crop nutrition leaders. Our customers appreciate our expertise in soil fertility and fertilizer technology. I’m proud to hear them refer to us as having integrity, dependability, and a knowledgeable team.  

We have a lot to offer customers, both retail customers and ultimately growers. They know that we are people with a strong mission statement and purpose. There's a lot of drive and energy when you know you're working with a team that has passion and cares about the customer. 

I also think retailers and growers that use our products appreciate our efforts to be good stewards of the environment. Not only in our mining and manufacturing operations, but also knowing that the products we deliver are made from quality minerals and materials and can be used in a sustainable manner. Too many companies do not hold themselves to the same standards that we do at Mosaic and it shows.   

What differentiates Mosaic and our products?  
Mosaic employees! We provide commodities and fertilizer technologies that serve as the platform for our customer’s business. Having a solid team from mine to market is the ticket. While many growers don’t get to see this, retailers value the business relationship and reliability of Mosaic. We have fertilizer technologies that deliver results year in and year out, and we have data to prove it. Mosaic conducts research and provides the science so that retailers can stand behind our products and feel confident in their performance. We conduct lab protocols, green-house work, small-plot replicated trials, and on-farm research that provide our customers with the foundation they need to support their grower customers. It is important to have data and ROI calculators that demonstrate the value created by our performance products.  

Differentiation requires constantly listening to retail customer and grower needs. Feedback from the field is critical to our success and innovation pipeline. We have a StageGate process that is a framework for collecting and building a business model around new ideas. Additionally, we have strategic research alliances that help “ground the science” on existing and new product development. This is especially important with the announcement of new partnerships and new product offerings over the next several years. 

How is Mosaic adapting to meet the future needs of growers? 
We are really thinking outside of the box to adapt to the future needs of growers.  For example, recent announcement of partnerships that will offer completely different types of crop nutrition technologies are in the works and will be the next chapter of innovation within Mosaic’s product portfolio. 

In prior years, when we trained retailers on balanced crop nutrition, we talked about the 17 essential elements (6 macronutrients and 8 micronutrients), crop nutrient demands, and how are products fulfill those nutritional needs. That's been the focus of our balanced crop nutrition strategy at Mosaic. 

Today, we are thinking about a more comprehensive or advanced approach that looks beyond those 17 essential crop nutrients to better understand soil health. In other words, how can we build upon traditional soil chemistry to better understand how living organisms in the soil interact with additions of nutrients and how can we influence their populations and synergies with nutrients to achieve the next-level of crop nutrition.   

Just like human nutrition and the old adage “you are what you eat,” nutrients and biology in the soil are the drivers of crop growth and development. Healthy soils produce healthy yields! Now more than ever we are looking at innovative ways to use our existing performance products and soon to be released technologies that span beyond traditional approaches by Mosaic or competitors. 

Learn more about Curt Woolfolk and is passion to help the world grow the food it needs.  

To learn more about soil health and Mosaic’s performance products, hear more from Curt at cropnutrition.com.