PRINCETON — Jaco and Cindy Van Der Westhuizen are living examples that rarely does great success come without great risks and significant challenges.

The owners of Liberty Ag Solutions, the couple both left successful careers in other industries, moved from the Midwest, and initially started Liberty Ag Solutions in Wilson in June of 2021, before ultimately moving the company to Princeton in March of 2023.

Starting an innovative, forward-thinking Ag company in the Southeast didn’t come without its share of challenges.

Independently owned Ag companies have become increasingly rare, particularly for a couple not native to the area.

“When you’re new, and you’re different, and you talk different it’s tough to break that shell,” Jaco said. “It’s very, very tough. I think the fact that we’re still here speaks more about us than anything because there’s very few independents left on the East Coast. If you go to Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana you can find five different independents right next to each other. They’ve all been driven out by large retail on the East Coast.”

Liberty Ag Solutions focuses on helping farmers increase their crop yield by offering simple and very defined supply strategies, that are more environmentally friendly than some traditional agricultural practices.

“We want to do things that are a little more sustainable,” said Jaco, a native of South Africa. “We don’t want to just bring more gallons on the acre, but do it better. We look at what the soil says, and we look at soil sampling. We’ll go pull leaves and so when I come back and say, ‘Hey, your beans need more potassium and iron, it’s not what the USDA says, it’s physically your fields. It’s really more pointed at the grower and what he’s looking for.”

The company also uses cutting-edge technology and emphasizes a farmer’s return on investment and cuts out all the bureaucracy and consultant-designed strategies that inflate grower invoices.

“There’s things that large Ag retail like to tell shareholders what their ambitions are,” said Jaco. “It costs more to get them because of the whole rebate game, and you never really achieve those things. It’s a nice idea. Where now, we had growers here last year, and I asked them, ‘What do you need?’ and they told me they needed that Midwest mentality. They are actively looking for new technologies, how to cut back on rates, and they are looking for sustainability and stewardship.”

Liberty AG Solutions also works hand-in-hand with local farmers to help them develop business plans tailored around soil samples and designed to generate the most profit for the farmer.

Building trust with multi-generational farmers and understanding that old habits die hard, particularly in the Ag industry, has been a challenge the Van Der Westhuizen’s tackled head-on.

“Our goal is not to give you massive yield, it’s how to make you more money,” Jaco said. “You have to prove it, you have to show it to them. An older grower here who is 80 years old is not going to listen to you because of a marketing sheet. You have to go on his farm and ask for five acres and do a sample spray and show it to him. They physically have to see it. One big problem in North Carolina is succession planning. There’s not a lot of young guys getting into farming behind dad or mom or grandpa, because it’s so expensive to do that. A lot of what we have done is focus on how we bring active ingredient rates down per acre. So instead of selling you a herbicide package and letting you figure it out, we sell products here that will actually make the active ingredient work better, so you can use less of that. We’re the only company around here that uses nanotechnologies, and so we embed your herbicide with these nanotechnologies, and you can cut back your usage rate by 20% to 30%. We’ve proven that.”

Liberty Ag Solutions also offers Strip Tilling to local farmers through its SoilWarrior machine, one of only four on the East Coast.

“What we do with the SoilWarrior is we bury the fertilizer in the furrow and then the grower will get the same GPS coordinates from us from our tractor so he plants right into that furrow,” Jaco said. “What it does is it puts the fertilizer where the root system is, and it sits right in the furrow and when the roots start growing, all the food is right there with it. It cuts back on the Nitrogen usage by half, even more than that. There’s not a lot of run-off from our product, we don’t just spread it on top of the ground and hope it’s going to travel down to the roots. We can actually plant beans with it too. So, it works the ground, it spreads the fertilizer and we can plant beans with it.”

The tight-knit local Ag community has taken notice as Liberty Ag Solutions has made good on its word and begun to deliver results for farmers willing to try unconventional methods.

As those unconventional methods have begun to become more accepted, word of mouth has been a tremendous boost for Liberty Ag Solutions.

“Seeing some of our bigger customers that used the SoilWarrior this year, it just created a buzz,” Cindy said. “People look at each other’s fields and they saw how well their beans did, and then they would come in and talk to Jaco and they would want to go out to those fields and they would want to see them. Seeing it definitely helped.”

Jaco has also capitalized on opportunities to pour into the next generation of farmers through speaking engagements and opening the doors of Liberty Ag Solutions to younger farmers interested in learning more about the industry.

“Two weeks ago, I was invited by the University of Mount Olive to give a speech about digital Ag,” Jaco said. “Other people were there selling their platforms, and I was asked to come and just explain why it’s important. I didn’t sell any platform that we utilize, it was just like here’s the realities about farming and how digital is going to save you and get you on these acres and get you something that is where the grower can see the value of what this digital is bringing. We have an open door here, if young kids want to come out here and work for the summer, we’ll always give them something to do.”

As Ag technology advances rapidly, Liberty Ag Solutions strives to continue to look forward and remain invested in an industry with a proud history and an equally important future in North Carolina.

“I think it’s important for us to help growers understand their acres and how to make educated decisions on their acres,” Jaco said. “You don’t want to just farm the same sequence they had because their dad or granddad had it. We want to show them what it can produce and let’s build a plan around that. Let the data drive the decision-making.”

Aside from local customers, Liberty Ag Solutions also has wholesale customers across the country.

They also have a small retail shop out of their location at 509 Gurleys Mill Road in Princeton.

To learn more about Liberty Ag Solutions visit libertyagsolutions.com and find them on Facebook.