This is the third edition in my ongoing series exploring the parallels between baseball and agriculture, continuing our broader conversation about how we ensure sustainability genuinely works for everyone involved.
If you're a baseball fan, you know championships don’t happen overnight. Great teams aren't bought, they're patiently built. The strongest franchises invest in their farm systems, identifying potential early and developing talent through thoughtful coaching and intentional progression. Players are refined, tested, and prepared, level by level, until they’re truly ready for the majors.
Agriculture, particularly when we talk about sustainability, follows a remarkably similar path.
New agricultural practices like cover cropping, reduced tillage, nitrogen management, biologicals, and carbon-sequestering strategies don’t start at scale. They begin as promising ideas, needing time, testing, and refinement. Agronomists, farmers, and their supporting retailers, like the coaching staff we talked about in last week's edition, play a critical role in this phase. They evaluate what works, what doesn’t, and, most importantly, what makes sense in each unique environment.
But the coaches can’t do it alone. In baseball, the coaches work within a much larger system, one that includes scouts, analysts, team managers, and owners. Those groups aren’t just watching, they’re actively influencing which players get developed, how fast they move, and what "success" even means.
That same dynamic is now playing out in agriculture. While agronomists and retailers work directly with farmers to guide on-farm decisions, there’s another group making increasingly urgent requests: CPGs, grain buyers, sustainability program managers, regulators, and consumers. They’re asking for change now, and their requests shape what programs get built, what practices are prioritized, and what outcomes are required.
The challenge, and the opportunity, is making sure those calling the plays from the front office stay connected to the coaches and players on the field.
That connection is exactly what makes or breaks success.
For example, we (Globally Responsible Production) recently completed a wheat-focused sustainability program that illustrates how a well-aligned team can produce major league results. This wasn’t theoretical, it was thousands of acres, multiple proven practices, and real-world implementation.
What made it work? The right practices, implemented in the right places, at the right time, with the right partners. Agronomists understood the fields and growers. A farmer-owned cooperative ensured strong execution. Our data and program teams brought structure. Indigo Ag led rigorous quantification and verification. An international grain partner aligned logistics. And a forward-thinking CPG set clear sustainability objectives, focusing on their supply chain footprint while remaining open to feedback.
The result? Verified negative carbon emissions, meaning this program didn’t just reduce emissions. It reversed them.
But it’s not just about that carbon number. The success came from a deep understanding that not all practices work everywhere, and sustainability isn’t one-size-fits-all. In some places, cover crops were the right tool. In others, farmers double-cropped instead, delivering the same benefit of living roots while harvesting an additional crop. Reduced tillage and nitrogen efficiency were emphasized where those practices moved the needle most.
This kind of success doesn’t happen by luck. It takes a connected team, honest communication between every player, and a shared understanding of both the agronomic and economic realities on the ground. It takes discipline not to scale practices too quickly. Just like in baseball, you don’t rush a prospect to the majors before they’re ready. And you don’t force a one-size-fits-all sustainability plan across a diverse landscape.
True sustainability, economically and environmentally, requires patient refinement, a clear plan, and a team aligned around long-term success.
In upcoming editions, we’ll dive into the roles fans and sponsors play in shaping a team’s future, and how baseball’s "Moneyball" approach to analytics can help us make smarter, data-driven decisions in agriculture.
I’d love your thoughts: What sustainability practices do you think deserve more attention and refinement before they’re scaled? How do we better connect those building programs with those implementing them?
Let’s keep the conversation going - drop your comments below.
#SustainableAgriculture #FarmSystem #Baseball #ParcelAg #GRP #AgricultureInnovation #CarbonFarming #SustainableFuture
