Landmark set for shake-up

Now Tommy Warner is Down Under - the young man in the spotlight as the newly-installed head of Australia's biggest farm services and agency business, Landmark.

It isn't a job he was expecting, but it carries some weighty expectations from Landmark's big parent company back in North America, and from the local agency network's diverse nation-wide client-base.

It's been a bumpy three-year bedding down period for Canadian-based fertiliser and crop chemical giant Agrium since it acquired Landmark, so Mr Warner's brief looks set to focus strongly on building better bridges between the local business and its overseas bosses.

"I think some decisions were made early on that weren't the fault of Landmark, but meant we've had some mis-steps on how Agrium handled the Australian business," he said.

"I don't think Agrium misinterpreted the market here, but perhaps they didn't give it the proper time or the network connection to attend to the issues or to truly understand what was going on.

"They didn't really have a good pulse on Australia."

Click on the image above to watch a video with Tommy Warner

Additionally, Landmark's contribution to Agrium's bottom line after a couple of seasons of weather extremes and frustrating livestock market trends "probably hasn't been what they wanted".

"Maybe it's what they expected, but not quite what they wanted," said Mr Warner, who arrived from Agrium's big Crop Production Services (CPS) division in western Kansas three months ago.

"I think one reason they sent me was to have somebody here who understood the way they think back in America and to provide a flavour from both worlds back to them.

"There hasn't really been somebody from the legacy company as a representative of the operation here - somebody who can interpret their view, but also represent Landmark's interests promote its opportunities.

"Hopefully I can help connect the dots."

Mr Warner, 38, has also arrived keen to build on Landmark's strong rural agency service culture, implementing a flatter management structure to promote branch-level initiatives for servicing farmers better or differently in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

"We've skinnied down the leadership team so we're talking to each other more about what we're doing and responding to opportunities more effectively," he said.

"We had a lot of silos and a lot of instances where people were doing their own thing and management was overlapping on top of each other - there wasn't enough communication.

"I think the key we're looking for is how to make the most of our opportunities by being different or better."

Fortunately Landmark had an experienced and talented senior management team - Robert Payne, Robert Clayton and Mark Truwin - who Mr Warner was pleased to be working closely alongside.

"I'm probably learning more from them than they are from me," he said, conceding he was particularly green when it came to experience in the livestock sector.

However, Tommy Warner is no stranger to steep learning curves, having joined Agrium's CPS at a crop inputs store in his home State of Illinois, then rising swiftly through the ranks as a crop consultant and site manager.

Initially from the cornbelt town of Galesburg, he had studied accountancy and played basketball on a college scholarship at Oklahoma State University before joining global accounting giant Arthur Andersen.

To help pay his way through university he picked up casual work as a crop scout working alongside agronomists from CPS.

However, six years of corporate accounting convinced him he was not cut out for the office-shackled formality of the job - Mr Warner quit the city life and big pay cheques to return to the cornbelt in 2003.

He secured a full-time job at a CPS depot in the township of Oneida and began delivering product to farms, filling trucks, blending fertiliser and studying to get his agronomic training up to speed.

"It really hit my trigger," he said.

"After coming out of an environment where there weren't many deals done with handshakes, I found people in agriculture had a much more basic approach to their work and life.

"I loved it, especially the true customer contact and making recommendations to help people. That's probably been the most fun part of my career."

By 2007 he was managing a network of Kansas stores supplying crop inputs to wheat growers and the irrigated cotton, potato, sugar and lucerne market.

"I enjoyed where I was. We were very successful and I wasn't looking to make any drastic change, but obviously moving to Australia is a great opportunity for a guy like me to stand in a different market."

"And it's Australia - it's a big, interesting place, and everybody likes Australia.

"It's a loved country across the world.

"It's a pretty cool situation to be in."