In US production agriculture, CapEx is at historic levels, margins are compressed, and the window between opportunities appearing and closing is shrinking. Most advisory firms are still working from data that's weeks old when the call comes in. One major firm has rebuilt for a different speed.

With costs running haywire, returns per corn acre dropping into the negatives (again), and volatility ensuring many American producers are pulling back from spending, it’s a tough time to thrive in crop farming.

But, it’s a problem Pinion is solving.

Founded in 1932 and recognised as one of the top accounting firms in the US, Pinion is one of the nation's leading advisory and accounting firms dedicated to the food and agriculture industry. Across every major production ag sector, they operate like an outsourced CFO to producers: getting close to the numbers, understanding the operation behind them, and helping drive growth from the inside.

Pinion recently became a Figured Gold Partner, reflecting their commitment to change for their producers, and their extensive experience in the platform. We recently sat down with Pinion ag consultant Derrick Deardorff to find out the problems they were facing before moving to the cloud, why they made the change, and what’s happened since for their producers…

Why The Stakes in Ag Have Never Been Higher

Derrick, who works on the farm business management side at Pinion, doesn't soften the current picture:

"The risk environment these days is higher than it ever has been," he said. "The numbers, when it comes to CapEx and equipment costs and everything, are higher than they ever have been."

The USDA estimates total US farm debt will reach a record $624.7 billion in 2026. Operating loan sizes were up 30% in late 2025, with repayment periods running three months longer, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. And many of the operations staying solvent are doing so largely on government support — payments that arrive on their own schedule, with their own tax treatment, and that can mask how thin the underlying market margin actually is.

This is the context in which Pinion is operating, trying to help producers understand how they’re doing, and how they could do better. And it’s where typical backwards-looking advisory couldn’t cut it.

The Structural Problem With Backwards-Looking Advisory

In traditional advisory, the workflow moves as fast as the tools allow. Trading QuickBooks backups, manually updating processes (probably in spreadsheets), and only then being able to schedule in a follow-up meeting with the client.

It works, but not quickly.

"By the time we got a backup, went through our processes of updating information, and then we're able to turn around and have a meeting with the client, it might take a week," said Derrick.

Systems built to look backwards can’t help clients prepare for what’s coming. Spreadsheets in particular can take so long to manage, let alone use, it prevents timely advice. That, and it isn't scalable, so the firm can only help so many clients at one time before it's too hard to get the data for each farm.

For producers operating in the current environment, it creates a gap between what they need (now), and what their advisor can produce. Not every farm can handle those risks.

Learn more: Why Traditional Accounting Tools Are Failing US Farm Clients

How Pinion Rebuilt for Speed

To solve this problem, Derrick and the Pinion team shifted to cloud-based accounting and restructured how they work across services.

Pinion's accounting services team, handling transaction coding and chart of accounts work in the client's general ledger, now connect through to management reporting in Figured. With accounting and advisory running on the same real-time data, the time Derrick spends preparing data before he can use it has shrunk.

And for the producer on the other end, the change is just as tangible.

"We get up to speed much quicker," Derrick said, "and have a common language, a common platform to work with and be able to translate that data back to them in a much more time-efficient manner."

Looking Forwards, Not Backwards

“We used to spend a lot of our time looking backwards, massaging the data, and getting it to the point where we can do some management analysis on it,” he added. “And now we’re spending much less time doing that and more time looking forward and being more growth oriented in our conversations than we were able to in the past.”

And the change in response time?

“I can have a client call me in the morning, and an hour or two later I can call him back and have answers to his questions and have refreshed reports.”

Making a Deliberate Transition

It’s not easy to transition a major accounting and advisory firm from one system to the other, and Pinion didn’t take this process lightly.

In fact, they started with just a handful of farms — clients they considered good candidates — before committing further.

“As with anything, when you're changing a process, you like to do a little bit of testing and see how things go,” Derrick explained. “We chose a few clients and farms that we thought would be good candidates to get our feet wet, got dug in deep with those, and felt comfortable enough — we really liked the way things were going with the system and the efficiencies that we were seeing from our side. And the clients were liking what they saw as well. So at that point, we realised that it was in our best interest to go full force on this.”

The goal now is for all of Pinion’s clients to transition to the cloud and integrate with their modern platforms. And it’s that commitment which has taken them to Gold Partner status at Figured.

Case Story: Same-Day Results for a Grain Producer

A producer came to Pinion looking at a major expansion to their grain handling facilities. The old workflow would have started with pro formas in Excel, debt service coverage ratios worked up over days, and a meeting booked for when the numbers were ready.

But the new system could move significantly more quickly.

At the time, Derrick built a new scenario in Figured, updated a few assumptions, and had a projected cash flow and balance sheet ready in a couple of minutes. He called the lender that same day and locked in pricing while opportunities were available.

The whole setup, as Derrick described it, "just allows us to react quicker and take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves."

Learn more: Figured for Crop Advisors

Seeing the Growth Through Hard Times

In America, row crop farming has been in a downturn. In previous cycles, Pinion would have expected clients to pull back — become more conservative, defer growth decisions, reduce exposure where they could. At least, that’s how things used to be.

"In prior downturns, like we are in for row crop, we probably would've seen clients pull back a little bit more from the growth perspective," Derrick said, "just being more conservative because there was more risk and less certainty around what things could look like."

What's different now is the confidence that faster numbers give producers to act.

“It’s been a really rewarding experience, when we can get through the process quicker and have solid numbers, solid projections, that allow them to have the confidence to go out and execute on that plan when the risks are so high and margins are so tight.”

“That’s what I'm most excited about — just seeing the growth through the hard times.”

Find out more about how Pinion is helping producers across America at pinionglobal.com.

Or, learn more about the modern financial planning framework that makes scalable advisory like this possible: