Meet the Member: Passion for Precision Drives Cory Willness of Croptimistic

Making the jump to be an entrepreneur can be intimidating, but it helps to be driven by a passion for precision. Cory Willness of Saskatchewan, Canda, grew up on the family farm with crops and a cow calf operation. After earning his degree in agronomy from the University of Saskatchewan, he worked in ag retail for eight years before making the leap to consulting.

“I have a passion for precision agronomy as compared to one rate/one recommendation per field,” Willness says. “When you are consulting, you are 100 percent working for the farmer to optimize what they spend, helping them be more profitable and sustainable.”

Willness consulted for a decade and then dove deeper into precision agriculture by founding Croptimistic, one of ADT’s newest certified member companies. The company has a unique offering by providing soil, water and topography maps (SWAT MAPS). “Providing insight into the additional layer lets you examine fundamentals that are stable as compared to satellite information that is always changing,” Willness says. He points out that both farmers and agronomists can relate to this additional layer of information about the fields.

The challenge of scalability is one start-up companies face, and collaboration can be one avenue to growth. “We are collaborating with FCC's AgExpert software to connect our SWAT MAPS data with their 4R sustainability framework, which offers farmers an incentive program to earn up to $4,000 per year,” Willness says.

He pursued ADT Certification because, “I’m all for transparency, and I think it’s good for contracts to be visible and for farmers have the answers to simple questions about their data.”

A proud grandpa of three granddaughters, Willness enjoys farm life with his family and is dedicated to being a resource for farmers. “You need to provide value over the long term, and our 98 percent retention rate of customers speaks to that dedication,” Willness says.