Ag Done Different: Why Agriculture Needs a New Way of Thinking

Agriculture has never been short on innovation.

Every year brings new technology, new products, and new ways to make existing processes faster or more efficient. But what if improving what already exists isn't enough?

In a recent Momentum Network Webinar, featured as a special episode of The Germinate Podcast, Joe Sampson and Jeremy Groeteke sat down with Daniel Schultz, founder of Schultz Collaborative, to discuss why agricultural businesses may need to stop following the existing industry playbook and start creating their own.

At the center of the conversation is a simple idea: Ag Done Different.

Are We Actually Innovating?

Agriculture is constantly improving products.

A piece of equipment becomes faster. Technology becomes more precise. A platform gets another feature. A company finds a way to shave a little time or cost from an existing process.

Those improvements matter, but Daniel challenges leaders to ask a bigger question.

Are we creating something meaningfully different, or are we simply creating slightly better versions of what already exists?

Incremental innovation can keep a business competitive, but it doesn't necessarily change the market.

Sometimes the bigger opportunity comes from questioning why the market works the way it does in the first place.

Stop Competing and Create a Category

This is where category design comes into the conversation.

Most businesses enter an existing market and immediately start thinking about their competitors.

How can we be cheaper?

How can we have more features?

How can we provide better service?

How can we convince customers we're the better option?

Category design approaches growth differently.

Instead of asking how to win within an existing category, companies can identify a problem that customers see differently and build a new category around solving it.

The goal isn't simply to capture demand.

It's to create it.

A Better Product Isn't Always Enough

Agriculture is filled with great products and incredibly smart people.

But having the best product doesn't automatically mean customers will understand why they should buy it.

That's where positioning becomes important.

If your marketing sounds exactly like everyone else's, customers have very little reason to see your company differently. You may have better technology or a better solution, but if you can't clearly communicate why it matters, you risk blending into an already crowded marketplace.

Being different requires more than a tagline.

It requires a clear point of view about the problem you're solving and why the traditional way of solving it needs to change.

"Ag Done Different" Is a Challenge

For Daniel, Ag Done Different isn't simply a marketing phrase.

It's a challenge to rethink how agriculture innovates, markets, sells, and leads.

Agriculture can be an industry rooted in tradition, and there's tremendous value in that history. But tradition can also make it easy to accept certain assumptions simply because "that's how we've always done it."

The businesses shaping agriculture's future may be the ones willing to question those assumptions.

Why does the customer have to buy this way?

Why do we sell this way?

Why does this problem continue to exist?

What if the solution isn't another improvement to the existing system?

Those questions can open the door to entirely new opportunities.

Agriculture Doesn't Need More Noise

There is no shortage of companies competing for attention in agriculture.

More technology. More products. More features. More marketing.

Standing out in that environment isn't about becoming louder.

It's about becoming meaningfully different.

For entrepreneurs, executives, marketers, and sales leaders, that means looking beyond what competitors are doing and spending more time understanding the problems customers actually need solved.

Because the next great agricultural company may not be the one that builds a slightly better version of what's already available.

It may be the company willing to create an entirely new way of thinking about the problem.

Agriculture doesn't always need another small improvement.

Sometimes, it needs to be done different.

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