AgWired

Verdesian Life Sciences is a plant health plant nutrition company. According to CEO and founder JJ Grow, from the start their plan was to create a portfolio of companies that had really good technology focused on nitrogen and phosphorous efficiencies as well as delivery systems, elicitors and innocolents. Or “things that help fixate nitrogen”.

Beginning in 2011 when Grow was in the process of founding the company, his team looked at companies that already had technologies in the marketplace as well as companies that had technologies in development. He said there were 90 plus companies they looked at and last week the company purchased its sixth company: QC Corporation.

“With a deep and global understanding of the agriculture industry, I realized I wanted to focus on taking tomorrow’s science and deliver today’s returns,” explained Grow. Thus the formation of Verdesian Life Sciences in September 2012 and the company’s philosophy. In this short time, Verdesian has become a leader in nitrogen and phosphorous technologies and products with one of their break-out technologies, Take Off, well, taking off.

Grow said they are in a position to hold a leadership position in the ag industry. “The biggest thing we look at is technology. I’ve worked at a lot of different companies who had really good technology and the one thing I’ve learned is if you have a technology that can be used in the marketplace and brings value to a farmer whether that’s in yield or efficiencies, you’re going to be successful with those technologies.”

Grow said if you look at the company’s technologies focused on macronutrients and micronutrients there is an unmet need in the marketplace and a lot of big companies have not focused here. The big companies have focused more on traditional pesticides and the herbicide companies have focused on the NP and K. “I think we’re in a unique position. By acquiring the leaders of those smaller companies we’ve put together a much larger company that can compete in the marketplace.”

Verdesian will be making some big technology announcements this fall so keep your eyes and ears on alert.

To learn more about Verdesian, their latest acquisition of QC Corporation and what’s next for the company, listen to my interview with JJ Grow: Interview with JJ Grow, Verdesian

View the 2014 Verdesian Los Alamos Media Tour photo album.

I recently had the opportunity to learn about Verdesian’s philosophy of how they take technologies and customize them to agriculture. I should take a step back and mention that Verdesian has a strong relationship with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the process of taking their defense research and “spinning it off” for agricultural applications.

As Nigel Grech, executive vice president of Science & Technology, explains science is critical to their company and for agriculture but many journalists and growers alike aren’t familiar with the science. This is a barrier, he said, because when you understand the basic science of a technology, then you understand the benefits of the technology.

So how does this LANL-Verdesian partnership work? Grech said there are four keys to successfully going from the lab to the farmer’s field:

1. Understanding the technology
2. Construction of intellectual property
3. Integration into what farms do
4. Education

“We need to make sure we have early access so we can structure the language properly. Oftentimes researchers don’t understand applications on the farm,” explained Rech when discussing the construction of intellectual property. Companies get into trouble when the language isn’t structured correctly. He also noted that today farmers have to do more with less; they need more product with less volume and this can be tricky.

When asked why education is so important Grech said, “A lot of good inventions go sideways because companies don’t do a good job of educating people about their product. Farmers need to know what it does, how to use it and what the benefits are.”

One example of a successful pathway from LANL to the field is the company’s Take-Off product. Grech explained it is formulated in such as way it can be used with multiple applications and this makes the product unique. I learned that there will be a new generation of Take-Off announced in the next couple of weeks so watch out for this.

To learn more about the partnership as well as about Take-Off listen to my interview with Nigel Grech: Interview with Nigel Grech, Verdesian

View the 2014 Verdesian Los Alamos Media Tour photo album.