Building an Agronomic Strategy for Scaling Regenerative Ag: Defining the Problem from the Farmgate Out

Jul 1

7 min read

This is the third post in our series on building effective agronomic strategies for regenerative agriculture product adoption. In our previous posts, "Building an Agronomic Strategy for Regenerative Ag Product Adoption" and "What is an Agronomic Strategy and Why Does it Matter for Scaling Regenerative Ag", we established the foundation and outlined the four key steps to building a successful agronomic strategy. This article dives deep into Step 1: Defining the Problem from the Farmgate Out, the critical first step that determines whether your regenerative ag solution will achieve real farmer adoption.

TL;DR

If your soil health product has solid science but struggles with farmer adoption, the issue might not be your product… it might be your understanding of the farmer's reality.

This article walks through a field-tested interview framework to help your team:

Start with the farmer's WHY — understanding their deeper motivations beyond just business metrics
Ask the right questions in the right order — building rapport before diving into challenges
Identify root causes vs. symptoms — so you can solve the real problem while communicating through their lens
Segment adopter types — focusing resources on strategic partners who can accelerate market traction

Whether you're in Product, Sales, Agronomy, or Strategy, this approach helps you build solutions farmers actually want to adopt.

Is your soil health product struggling with farmer adoption despite solid science and promising trial data?

Before you invest in another R&D cycle, expand your sales team, or launch the next marketing campaign… stop and ask:

Do you know what problem you're actually solving at the farmgate AND is this understanding consistent across your organization?

When I work with regenerative and soil health companies, this is where we start. Not in the lab. Not in the efficacy data. But on the farm, with the farmer's WHY.

Here are some of the questions I use to understand the farmgate reality, in this specific order:

✅ Why do you farm?

✅ What excites you most about your operation right now?

✅ What challenges keep you up at night?

✅ What have you tried to fix those issues and what held you back?

✅ What have you learned from those challenges?

💡 Note: This sequence matters. Start with their passion and pride to build rapport, then transition to challenges once they're engaged. End with learnings to assess their adopter type and strategic value.

But here's the thing: Farmers often describe the symptoms, NOT the root cause. And companies often respond to the root cause BUT forget to speak to the symptom.

🔁 That's where the market disconnect happens.

Your product development team may focus on the biology, chemistry, and/or systems thinking, while farmers just want a simpler way to fix compaction, get a better stand, or make low-performing acres profitable.

Field compaction as shown by radish root

Digging Deeper: The Questions That Matter 🎯

1️⃣ "Why do you farm?"

This one often takes several follow-up questions to get to the core. I often hear surface-level answers first:

"I enjoy being outside"
"I like being my own boss"
"There's never two days that are the same"
"I can't imagine doing anything else"
"Farming is who I am, it's my identity"

But with patience, you'll uncover deeper motivations:

"Farming is my calling — I'm stewarding the land and preparing it for the next generation"
"Farming allows me the opportunity to be a steward and share my work and passion with my family"
"When I farm, I'm taking care of life. Not only am I taking care of life, but I'm also creating a good that helps people"

Here's what's fascinating: I rarely hear farmers say "It's a business" — which is a crucial insight for product positioning. Farmers are relational. Relational with the land, their crops, their animals, people, and their communities. You can hear it in their why, and understanding this when developing products or go-to-market strategies is essential.

The question becomes: How will the solution you're creating help solve their challenges AND make their why better?

The reason I don't hear people say their why is just for the business is because, although that makes up part of their motivation, farming goes much deeper and there's almost always a legacy component. (Sometimes farmers don't think enough about their operation as a business, but that's a story for another day.)

2️⃣ "What excites you most about your operation?"

This question may not be on many customer interview lists, but I find it valuable for two strategic reasons:

First, it helps farmers appreciate what they've accomplished, making them more open-minded about their current reality and potential improvements. It shifts the conversation from problem-focused to possibility-focused, creating a more productive dialogue.

Second, you might uncover additional insights about how to better position your solution. When farmers talk about what excites them, whether it's seeing cover crops emerge, watching soil biology improve, or achieving consistency across variable ground, you're hearing their success metrics and emotional drivers.

These insights help you frame your product not just as a problem-solver, but as an accelerator of what already motivates them.

3️⃣ "What challenges keep you up at night?"

This question is critical. Listen closely to HOW they describe their problem. If they're describing symptoms, ask follow-ups to get to the root. Helping them address the root challenge may actually lead to cascading benefits that solve other issues.

Here's a real example: I've worked with a particular farm for several years. He's always battled hard soils and described, time and time again, how he has to use excessive down pressure on his planter to reach ideal planting depths for his corn. He's tried different tillage tools, no-tillage, and cover crops. All made differences (especially the combination of the last two), but he still battled tight soils.

Corn rooting depth in hard soils — Hard soils impacting planting depth

When we first started working together, we took a closer look at his soil test levels to better understand nutrient dynamics. What we found was revealing: he had excessive magnesium levels in his soil, both inherent from the geology and from the type of lime historically used across his farm.

Since then, we've continued minimal-to-no-till, cover crops, plus yearly gypsum applications. The gypsum is helping reduce magnesium levels, allowing the soil to breathe better and making it more hospitable to a diverse microbiome (cascading benefit).

Here's the key insight: We identified part of the root cause (excess magnesium), but I communicated the solution through the symptoms he understood. "By adding gypsum, we'll see the soil grow more mellow, and you won't have to use as much down pressure on the planter to achieve adequate corn planting depths."

This is exactly what companies offering regenerative and soil health products need to do: understand a farmer's challenges, dissect them down to the root cause, create a solution that addresses the root, and communicate the product's abilities back to the farmer through the lens they best understand.

Doing otherwise makes it complicated and farmers want to achieve their why in the easiest and most profitable way possible.

4️⃣ "What have you tried to fix those issues?"

This question provides incredible insight into how to design your solution. Listen closely to their frustrations and help them imagine the "what if." Use these insights to create a prioritization framework that finds alignment between customer desires and your business's capabilities and direction.

Understanding what they've already attempted tells you:

What approaches have failed and why
Where the friction points are in implementation
What success looks like from their perspective
How to position your solution as the logical next step

5️⃣ "What have you learned from those challenges?"

This question helps you understand the farmer's adopter archetype, which is critical for segmentation and go-to-market strategy.

If they've learned nothing or give vague answers, they're probably late majority or laggards. The insights may not be beneficial for reaching the early adopters you want to target initially.

If they can articulate detailed learnings such as what worked, what didn't, and why, you've identified a strategic partner who can help you iterate on your solution and provide ideas for making it easier for middle adopters to leverage.

When I work with growers, I ask this question at multiple points throughout the year. It helps us think about future direction and fine-tune our approach. The farmers who consistently have thoughtful answers become my innovation partners. They help bridge the gap between cutting-edge solutions and practical implementation.

The Strategic Impact 📈

As shown above, asking better questions will help your organization save significant time and resources when you understand the challenges from the farmgate out. This approach enables you to:

⚡ Reduce time-to-market by designing products farmers actually want to use

⚡ Improve trial ROI by basing research on questions that influence purchasing decisions, rather than assumptions

⚡ Increase market penetration by creating messaging that resonates with actual pain points

⚡ Lower customer acquisition costs through higher conversion rates and referrals

⚡ Build competitive advantage by demonstrating deeper market understanding

A well-built agronomic strategy doesn't ignore complexity — but it starts where the grower is.

It helps companies:

✔️ Ask better questions that drive product-market fit

✔️ Design trials that reflect actual purchasing criteria

✔️ Build messaging that meets farmers where they are AND moves them toward adoption

✔️ Align cross-functional teams around customer-centric solutions

The Bottom Line

If your product research, market data, or sales messaging isn't driving the adoption rates you expected, it may not be a product problem. It may be a strategic perspective problem.

Start at the farmgate. Ask real questions. Stay close to what matters most.

When you understand not just what farmers do, but why they do it and how they think about their challenges, you're no longer just selling a product. You're offering a path toward their deeper purpose.

That's when adoption stops feeling forced and starts feeling natural — and your growth metrics start reflecting your product's true potential.

What's Next in This Series

This deep dive into defining the problem from the farmgate out is just the beginning. In our upcoming articles, we'll explore the remaining three steps of building a comprehensive agronomic strategy for regenerative agriculture:

Part 2: Aligning Agronomic Fit with Product Capabilities
Part 3: Identify WHERE Adoption is Most Likely
Part 4: Equip the Right People to Tell the Story

Each article will provide the same level of practical, field-tested frameworks you can immediately apply to your regenerative ag products and strategies.

Ready to build an agronomic strategy that drives real adoption? 🚀

If your soil health or regenerative product has the science but lacks the traction, it's time to step back and examine your approach from the farmgate out.

At Living Roots, we help companies like yours translate farmer insights into actionable strategies that drive measurable growth.

Let's talk about your adoption challenges and build a roadmap that works.