Greg Dahl, Winfield United, spoke about Land O’Lakes, a Fortune 500 company with 290 facilities across all 50 states and 50+ countries. They have 10,000 employees and are the 3rd largest US member-owned cooperative. WinField United is a crop protection, seed marketing and professional products company in River Falls for 30 years!
Greg Dahl, Winfield United, opened by noting that Winfield United has actually been in River Falls for 30 years! Greg has been with WinField for 20 years. WinField is a part of Land O’Lakes, which is known for its dairy products. Land O’Lakes also owns Purina’s animal nutrition and feed lines (excluding dogs and cats) and Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN, which is focused on making all of their businesses with much better stewardship. As part of Land O’Lakes, they are owned by the farmers, so their focus is on making life better for farmers – a great place to be!

Land O’Lakes is a Fortune 500 company with 290 facilities across all 50 states and 50+ countries. They have 10,000 employees and are the 3rd largest US member-owned cooperative. Their goal is to feed 9.5M people by 2050. They are focused on innovation and growth – for our people and our business. They are rounded in the values on which they were founded. They are purpose driven – this is about feeding the world.

WinField United is a crop protection, seed marketing and professional products company. It is actually eight businesses working together. Seed, CPP, FGI, ag technology, R&D, Omnium, equipment, and professional products/retail. They have numerous proprietary brands and services, most of which started at the UW-RF Lab Farm. WinField’s relationship with UW-RF goes back to 1987. Working together, they have researched and brought to market more than 60 products. WinField has now grown to cover 25-30% of all US farmland. They are the 4th largest seed company and the number on Crop Protection Products (CPP) wholesaler in the US. WestField’s Answer Plot Program works with more than 4000 acres at nearly 200 sites across the US to test different products. As an example of the products they produce, Greg talked about InterLock, a product that is added to spray solution to help get the treatment chemicals distributed evenly, making it beyond the top leaves and reducing “off target movement,” chemicals going places they weren’t intended.

WinField’s new facility in the industrial park north of River Falls is their Innovation Center. They also have a field building at the Lab Farm where they store much of their machinery. They used to do all of their work out of the lab farm, where they had “half a chicken coop and half a machine shed.” It was basically a two-person operation with college students helping out; they now have 30 people working at the Innovation Center. Many of them are local people and UW-River Falls alumni. The greenhouse at the Innovation Center enables them to do things earlier and at a much smaller scale than what was possible at the Lab Farm. The “wind tunnel” provides space to test products like InterLock and the lab space enables innovative experimentation. They are also developing technology useful to farmers, including mapping, monitoring and forecasting applications.

In response to a question, Greg acknowledged that there have been problems with misuse and overuse of chemicals; while they continue to partner with companies like Monsanto, they are also working with farmers on how to farm smarter as they are pressed to produce more food on less acreage. In addition to more effective use of chemicals, ag technology is also being developed; innovations like weeding robots are likely to be part of farming in the future. Learn more at www.winfieldunited.com.