AGRONOMY ONE, LLC

6448 W 5TH STREET RD, OWENSBORO, KY 42301

Ronan Cummins has recently ventured out on his own as an independent crop consultant, following 15 years working for retail/ wholesale agricultural supply companies. Cummins is operating under the banner of his new company “Agronomy One, LLC”, an independent provider of crop consulting services to the farmers of the Ohio River Valley.

Until September 2012, Ronan Cummins was the General Manager of Opti-Crop, a full-service crop consulting firm based in Owensboro KY.  Opti-Crop is a division of Crop Production Services a major retailer of crop protection products, fertilizer, seed and services across the United States.

Cummins is a native of Drogheda, Ireland.  He earned a B.SC. (Hons) degree in Agriculture from Harper Adams University College in Shropshire, England in 1995.  During his undergraduate course of study, Cummins gained considerable on-farm work experience pertaining to intensive crop management in both the United Kingdom and Ireland.  Upon graduation from Harper Adams, he took a one-year sabbatical in Western Australia to study and be involved with broad acre wheat production.

Following his experience in Australia, Cummins returned home to Ireland and enrolled in University College Dublin.  There he earned a M.SC (Hons) degree in Crop Protection in October 1997.  His master’s thesis investigated the detection of organophosphate insecticides in foodstuffs by the E.L.I.S.A. (enzyme linked immunosorbent assay) method.

Cummins then moved to the United States and joined Miles Farm Supply (recently acquired by Crop Production Services).  Initially he worked as an intern, but was soon promoted to serve as the lead Opti-Crop consultant at the former Miles Farm Supply retail store near Patoka, IN.  At that location, he had the experience of building a crop consulting customer base from scratch.  The major crops he worked with their included wheat, corn and soybeans.  His responsibilities at the Patoka store also enabled him to gain substantial insight regarding the numerous ways an in house crop consulting service can drive and benefit clients as well as the associated retail business. 

During his fifteen years with Opti-Crop, Cummins visited and worked in Russia on two occasions.  In particular, he assisted other Opti-Crop personnel in providing crop consultancy services on a 72,000-acre former state-run farm in Russia’s Krasnodar region. The franchising of the Opti-Crop brand has also allowed the business to expand into Missouri, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Georgia and Alabama.

Other work related travel has included Brazil, Germany, Poland and the U.K.

Cummins is a Certified Crop Adviser. He is a keen advocate of no-till farming and precision agriculture methods (using GPS). In his spare time he enjoys collecting farm models and hobby farms at his home near Owensboro, KY.