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Global competitors are pouring billions into agricultural research and emerging technologies, while American farmers are being asked to do more with less. The pressure on farmers is real: Net farm income for row crop producers remains persistently low, public investment in agricultural research has plummeted to 1970s levels, and the technologies that could reshape our industry too often stall before reaching the farm gate. At Land OLakes Inc., we believe theres a better way forward rooted in cooperation, trust, and a ground up approach to innovation. We believe the cooperative mindset is what it will take to overcome the challenges ahead. Its a mindset that shows up in how we invest, innovate, and grow. For example, our recent announcement of AgRogue Growth Partners shows how we aim to harness the strength of the cooperative model by working together with our local agricultural retail owners to fast-track the discovery, investment, and adoption of breakthrough technologies. This isnt simply a funding initiative. Its channeling deep, generations-old relationships and a mindset of continuous productivity improvements to better support the businesses, farmers, and communities that feed the world. REAL INNOVATION STARTS WITH SYSTEM-LEVEL THINKING The future of agriculture depends on our ability to bring stability and predictability to an industry that too often feels like a roller coaster. The pressures were facingweather volatility, rising input costs, and international competition wont be solved by any single tool or tactic. We need system-level thinking and long-term partnerships. Innovation shouldnt be about chasing the next shiny object. Its about helping farmers make smarter, lower-risk decisions, acre by acre, season by season. Whether thats through precise application technologies, AI-powered insights or new business models that reduce exposure, our innovation-focused goals should be simple: Make farming more resilient and more profitable for those who feed the world. HOW TO CRACK THE CODE TO FARMGATE ADOPTION The problem isnt a lack of ideas. Every year, new technologies emerge with the potential to transform how we farm, from AI-powered analytics to cutting-edge crop inputs. But the simple truth is that many promising solutions never scale, not because they dont work but because they cant break through the noise, earn trust, or integrate into the systems growers rely on. Bringing local agricultural retailers and producers together for pilot testing and performance discussions is central to finding practical and scalable solutions. Sitting at the kitchen table with farmers provides invaluable data and feedbackthey know the land, the seasons, and the day-to-day pressures associated with the crop or livestock they raise. When innovation flows through this channel, its far more likely to be understood, adopted, and create lasting value. Ultimately, retailer partners provide the local support, operational know-how, and market access that startups crave as they look to scale innovation. Weve seen it work time and again with the latest innovations in seed and crop protection; theres no reason we cant do it again with the most promising ag tech solutions. The last-mile connection between innovation and implementation is where a cooperative structure and retailer network will truly shine. A CALL TO COLLABORATE The challenges facing agriculture and Americas farm families are not something any one business can solve alone. It will take cooperation and cross-sector partnerships to ensure U.S. agriculture remains globally competitive. So, the cooperative approach offers a blueprint worth consideringespecially for industries wrestling with the same adoption gaps and trust barriers that agriculture faces. Capital alone isnt enough. Relationships matter. Local connections matter. And innovation that ignores the end user is destined to stall. Our message is clear: If youre building for the farm, you need to build with the farmer by tapping into the systems they already trust. True success in agriculture depends on solutions that work where it countsin the hands of farmers. Brett Bruggeman is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Land OLakes, Inc.
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E-Commerce
I always dream of the same mall. So begins a recent post on the popular subreddit r/The MallWorld. The subreddit was first created in 2021, and currently has 10,000 monthly visitors detailing their recurring dreams of eerie, often empty spaces. The description reads, Have you been to one of these common dream locations? The post continued: It has a very vintage feel to it. It always has warm amber lighting and wooden guard rails. It has 3 main floors, and one secret lower floor. The lower floor is usually kept pristine, a time capsule of the 90’s. The stores are closed, but the merchandise remains. It smells like my kindergarten class did.. If this dream sounds familiar, you are not alone. The post is among thousands on Reddit and TikTok who say they also dream of the same space, collectively referred to as Mall World. But this is no ordinary shopping mall. While not always identical, many say their mall worlds share similarities. It has endless stairwells, forbidden floors, and looping elevators. Some have dreamed of the same food court, others of an arcade. Sometimes the dreamscape is not even a mall at all but a water park or an airport. People have tried to draw maps of Mall World. I finally dont feel alone, wrote one on Reddit. I feel so much relief in not being the only one. The dreamscape has recently seen a resurgence in interest. One TikTok user said she discovered the Mall World subreddit after searching for answers about a recurring dream she was having. She explained, Finding the Mall World has literally changed my life because there are 20 thousand people having the same exact dreams as mine. The video was posted earlier this year and currently has over 400,000 views. So why is everyone having the same dream? There are a number of theories circulating the internet. One suggests it is related to Carl Jungs theory of collective unconsciousness the idea that all humans share a deep, inherited layer of the unconscious mind that shapes how we think and dream. Others have linked the idea to astral travel, where the physical body is left behind to go explore other planes of consciousness. Another conspiracy theory links these shared dreams to the gifted and talented program in the 1980s and 1990s. Or perhaps the real reason is less intriguing. Most of us have been to a mall at least once in our lives and our brains tend to feed off existing mental maps and memories to construct our dreamscapes. As Dylan Selterman, an associate teaching professor at the Johns Hopkins University department of psychological and brain sciences, told The New York Times, sometimes people dream about weird stuff. Liminal spaces have been a source of online fascination for years. A simpler explanation may be that the online discourse is unconsciously influencing peoples dreams. If youve not visited Mall World and are feeling left out, just reading about Mall World might be enough to trigger a visit.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. D.R. Horton, Americas largest homebuilder, is doubling down on mortgage rate buydowns to keep its sales volumes up amid an affordability-strained housing market. On its October 28 earnings call, the builder said 73% of its homebuyers in fiscal Q4 2025 received a mortgage rate buydownup slightly from 72% in the previous quarter. As we anticipated on our last call, we did expect to lean in more heavily to the offering of 3.99% [mortgage rate buydown], said Jessica Hansen, D.R. Hortons senior vice president of investor relations. That is something that we’ve been doing, and we saw the mortgage rate in our backlog come down. It’s actually below 5% today coming into this quarter. For D.R. Hortons buyersmany of whom are first-time homeownersthe monthly payment remains the decisive factor. The most attractive monthly payment we can put them in is with a lower rate, said CEO Paul Romanowski. Its a benefit to the homeowner over time in terms of paying down more of their principal. The strategy has come at a cost: incentive spendingincluding mortgage rate buydowns. The companys gross margin on home sales fell to 20% in Q4 2025, down from 23.6% in Q4 2024 and well below the 26.9% in Q4 2021. Indeed, increased incentive spending accounted for 61% of D.R. Hortons recent margin compression in Q4, while higher litigation costs made up another 33%. The incentives appear to be working. Net new orders rose 5% year-over-year in Q4 to 20,078up from 19,035 a year earlierdemonstrating D.R. Hortons ability to maintain sales momentum despite affordability headwinds. However, its backlog continues to shrink as the builder intentionally slows housing starts to better align inventory levels and capitalize on easing construction costs. Regionally, D.R. Horton pointed to softness in parts of Florida, including Jacksonville and Southwest Florida, where excess inventory has weighed on absorption rates. The company also described Texas as choppy and California as a bit of a struggle, while noting signs of stability across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Even with new tariffs and immigration policy headlines, the company said material and labor costs remain under controldown 1% quarter-over-quarter and 1.5% year-over-year. Many giant homebuilders are crediting softer housing starts for helping offset policy-related cost pressures. ResiClub PRO members can read our full D.R. Horton analysis here.
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E-Commerce
Public servants manage a geographically distributed group of people across dozens of public and private organizations daily. Cybersecurity officials work with state and federal counterparts, and homelessness coordinators work with public health departments and nonprofits. State veterans affairs departments sit at the intersection of educational and health benefits along with housing and job assistance. From my conversations with public servants across the country, its clear that most critical government functions cannot happen without collaboration. This makes it paramount to have a deep understanding of who does what across dozens of organizations for government to function effectively. ENTER THE CRM The dominant modern tool for tracking relationships and managing contacts is customer relationship management software, simply referred to as a CRM. While CRMs arose to help sales teams manage their networks, theyre widely used today as contact managers. And yet the focus on closing sales dominates CRM product design. One CRM company aims to help its users attract more prospects, close more deals, and strengthen customer relationships. Another says the goal of its CRM is simple: Improve relationships to grow your business. A third CRM aims to be “the sales assistant your team never had.” But government employees dont sell. They need a network map of people to identify the individuals, organizations, and skill sets to achieve different purposes. These purposes depend on the initiative, like what policy theyre implementing, what guidance theyre finalizing, or what community initiative theyre managing.So public servants have two ill-fitting options for managing relationships. One approach is tracking contacts manually, constantly referring back to their inbox and past emails, or copy-pasting from lists in spreadsheets that quickly go out of date. The other option is to force CRMswhich are designed for salesto serve as coordination tools, a mismatch between purpose and function. GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES ARENT TRACKING SALES FUNNELS The mismatch causes problems when CRMs are deployed for government initiatives. CRMs are built to support a linear sales processa deal is won, lost, or in progress. So CRMs categorize prospects by their progression through the sales funnel, quantify sales rep performance, and generate insights about pipeline size and time to close deals. But government agencies dont have a sales funnel. Their work hinges on knowing whos who across public, private, and nonprofit organizations because their work is embedded in overlapping networks. Imagine a state employee named Jess. Jess spearheads an initiative to reduce homelessness, leads coordination efforts with the states public health agency, and is the point of contact for homeless shelters. By virtue of this work, Jess also participates in a working group of state, county, and local agencies addressing homelessness. She also serves on the board of an organization that convenes state agencies addressing homelessness in the same region. A typical CRM would try to locate Jess in a nonexistent sales funnel. A CRM built for government would capture Jesss different roles across many groups and operations. And it would let its users leverage this information at the right time for the right action or communication. PUBLIC SERVANTS NEED ONGOING RELATIONSHIP CONTEXT The reality of overlapping networks in government operations leads to the second misalignment: data enrichment over time. In a CRM, data enrichment refers to the attributes that can be identified and recorded about a person or entity. For private companies, data enrichment isnt thatvitalthey want to move prospects through the sales funnel toward a deal. Their customer segments are generally well-defined, so they need to know basic information about prospects, like name, title, and organization. Depth of knowledge is secondary. And while some information may change, that hardly matters once the deal is closed, meaning data enrichment has diminishing returns over time in traditional CRMs. But for government agencies, ongoing data enrichment is a critical CRM capability. Public servants must activate geographically and organizationally distributed groups of people for countless initiatives occurring in parallel. The richer the context, the better. This is the difference between simply knowing that Jess participates in a working group and capturing every role she plays in all her different capacitiesand having that information autonomously updated. The people and organizations public servants need to coordinate with are always changing, too. Government agencies network maps, organized in a CRM, are multi-layered, always in flux, and a mission critical resource. PUBLIC SERVANTS DESERVE PURPOSE-BUILT TECHNOLOGY The only way to effectively manage ever-changing groups of people and organizations and align them with government operations is to have a CRM that prioritizes data enrichment over time. Government, unlike sales, doesnt have a defined end. A new class of government-centric CRMs should treat contacts as members of overlapping networks. They should capture attributes relevant to government work and update continuously, managing contact attributes as they change in real time, so public servants can spend their time collaborating with those contacts to do their job. This should be table stakes for a government CRM. Public servants also work as teams and need easier ways to operationalize their network, like with more reliable mass email sending. We are at an inflection point where governments across the country are being asked to do more with less. Technology should enable, not be an obstacle. CRMs, despite their centrality to government operations, remain an obstacle because they are not built for government work. So what are public servants to do? Their best, which means trying to make a tool work and fighting against it, because it wasnt designed to address their needs and maximize their capabilities. In my conversations with public servants, a recurring theme is the need to track the people and organizations that matter to the mission. Our driving conviction at Civic Roundtable is that government employees deserve better. They deserve software designed, built, and deployed specifically for government operations. The CRM deserves a rethink in service of public servants. Madeleine Smith is cofounder and CEO of Civic Roundtable.
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E-Commerce
The $500 million Los Angeles Dodgers’ thrilling World Series win over the Toronto Blue Jays attracted record international attention for Major League Baseball, affirmed LA’s status as the sport’s best team and drew more attention to baseball’s payroll disparity heading into what is likely to be contentious labor negotiations.Los Angeles’ 5-4, 11-inning win over Toronto in Game 7 on Saturday night capped a postseason with seven winner-take-all games, two more than any previous year.Shohei Ohtani is building a case as the sport’s best player ever with his unprecedented two-way performances, captivating audiences outside the U.S. unlike any previous player.“It just absolutely been the greatest benefit to the game that you can imagine throughout the year,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.Toronto’s success this year sparked interest throughout Canada, which gave the Blue Jays nationwide support.Aaron Judge, Bobby Witt Jr., Paul Skenes and Cal Raleigh already have committed to play for the United States in next year’s World Baseball Classic, which is gaining increased interest with each addition.And MLB is negotiating to send big league players to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics during an extended All-Star break.“Players are interested in playing, whether it’s for the Team USA or any number of other teams around the world,” union head Tony Clark said. The Dodgers are already talking about a three-peat Minutes after the Dodgers became the first repeat champion since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees, Dodgers star Freddie Freeman said matching that pinstriped power was the next goal.“The Yankees are three-time back-to-back,” he said, “so we get to use that same narrative next year.”Those Yankees are among just four instances of teams winning three or more consecutive championships alongside five by the 1949-53 Yankees, four by the 1936-39 Yankees and three by the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics. Big market spending sparks talk of salary-cap proposal Dodgers manager Dave Roberts attracted attention after the National League Championship Series sweep of Milwaukee when he yelled to Los Angeles fans: “They said the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball!”Los Angeles entered the World Series having spent $509.5 million in major league payroll and projected luxury tax, plus another $6.5 million for pitcher Roki Sasaki’s minor league signing bonus.Including Sasaki’s bonus, the Dodgers spending for its two World Series title teams totaled at least $890 million. The New York Mets, who failed to reach the playoffs this year after getting knocked out in last year’s NLCS, have spent about $860 million in 2024 and ’25.In a sign of how much payroll disparity has increased, the Athletics spent less than $150 million over the same period.Manfred repeatedly has said owners haven’t settled on their labor proposals, but the players’ association is bracing to resist a push for a salary cap. Demand for a cap from owners is what led to a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 and the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years.The labor contract expires on Dec. 2, 2026, and bargaining is likely to start this winter or spring. More Japanese players likely headed to MLB Following the success of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, more Japanese players may sign with MLB teams.Munetaka Murakami, a third baseman and first baseman who turns 26 in February, is expected to be posted by the Yakult Swallows. He hit .273 with 22 homers and 47 RBIs this year, limited to 56 games by an oblique injury. A two-time Central League MVP, in 2022 he hit 56 homers to break Sadaharu Oh’s record for a Japanese-born player while becoming the youngest player to earn Japan’s Triple Crown.Kazuma Okamoto, a 29-year-old third baseman and first baseman. will be posted by the Yomiuri Giants. He has 248 homers in 11 Central League seasons, hitting 30 or more from 2018-23.Tatsuya Imai, a 27-year-old right-hander, could be posted by the Seibu Lions. He struck out 17 against Yokohama on June 17, breaking Daisuke Matsuzaka’s prior team record of 16 from 2004. Here come the robots Game 7 of the World Series was MLB’s last with human umpires making all ball/strike calls.Starting next season, the Automated Ball/Strike System will be installed in all big league ballparks and batters, catchers and pitchers will be able to appeal decisions to a high-tech system of cameras tracking each pitch and judging whether it crossed home plate within the strike zone.Each team has the ability to challenge two calls per game and a team retains its challenge if successful, similar to the regulations for video review, which has been in place for many calls since 2014. Teams that exhaust their challenges get one additional challenge in each extra inning AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb Ronald Blum, AP Baseball Writer
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E-Commerce
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