Trey Cutts didn’t grow up on a farm—he checked a box on a college application form and ended up falling in love with an industry he’d never imagined. Today, as a VP of Agriculture Science helping to launch novel plant nutrition platforms at Tidal Grow, he’s proof that a winding path through turfgrass management, research stations, and international markets, can prepare you for exactly the right job at exactly the right time.
A Happy Accident at the University of Georgia
When Cutts was choosing a major, options in the University of Georgia’s College of Agriculture simply looked interesting on a list. He had no farming background, no family connections to agriculture – but desired a tangibly impactful career What he found when he arrived at UGA’s College of A agriculture surprised him: a community he immediately loved, and a field of work that felt both intellectually serious and deeply practical.
“I always knew I didn’t necessarily have the practical farming background,” he says, “so I was really passionate about digging into that early on.” He did just that— stepping into a farm management role right after college and managing a turf farm from an agronomy perspective, It was a deliberate effort to build the foundation he felt he was missing, and it set the tone for a career defined by curiosity and range.
The real click came when he landed in Tifton, Georgia—home to UGA’s agricultural campus, surrounded by Georgia farm country. Working for ag faculty there, he realized he could pursue a research-based, science-driven career without leaving the hands-on world he’d come to love. “Here’s the hybrid I’m looking for,” he remembers thinking. He went on to earn advanced degrees and logged time in both public and private sectors, domestically and internationally, before arriving at his current role.
From Scatter to Systems: How a Diverse Career Paid Off
Cutts laughs when he looks back at his resume. “My career is a bit schizophrenic,” he admits. Crop nutrition, crop protection, international markets, farm management, research—he’s touched it all. But when he joined Tidal Grow AgriScience in October 2024, the scattered dots finally connected into a clear picture.
Tidal Grow sits at the intersection of plant nutrition and crop protection, with international expansion on the horizon. Cutts’s broad background—understanding genetics, overseas experience, cross-sector relationships—turns out to be precisely what that kind of organization needs in building a systems agronomy approach and team to execute it. “Everything I’ve done has prepared me to step into what I’m doing now with confidence,” he says.
The tradeoff, he acknowledges, is depth for breadth—jumping around means you cede some deep expertise in any single field. But his answer to that is his team. He works alongside specialists and sees his role as providing a higher vantage point: someone who can walk into almost any conversation, recognize the terrain, and help move the work forward.
10,000 Acres and a New Way to Feed Crops
Tidal Grow’s founders built the company around naturally derived core chemistry with applications that reach well beyond agriculture—from replacing microplastics in materials and heavy metals in water treatment to delivering safer crop inputs to farmers around the world. For Cutts, the most immediate and exciting piece of that mission is a foliar nutrition platform that’s been decades in the making.
“There hasn’t really been any significant innovation in how we deliver foliar nutrition in 30 or 40 years,” he says. His team completed a network of grower trials—more than 10,000 acres’ worth—to validate the technology before the team launched it into the market last fall. The product targets nitrogen management, one of the most consequential and contested challenges in modern agronomy. Nitrogen is simultaneously the most critical nutrient to yield and the one most under scrutiny for environmental impact.
Cutts is careful not to frame carbon footprint reduction as an add-on or a sacrifice. “It’s not going to happen at the expense of agronomy, farmer economics, and crop yields,” he insists. The pitch, instead, is better intake for optimized effectiveness: a grower who uses nitrogen more precisely gets a better return on investment. Environmental benefit follows from good agronomy, not from asking farmers to accept less.
Why Relationships Start at the Farm Gate
Ask Cutts what a typical day looks like and he’ll say: a lot of travel. Launching products from a startup—one without the name recognition of an established ag giant—means face-to-face time is non-negotiable. “Relationships are so important in agriculture,” he says, “and especially when you’re bringing solutions to market with a not-well-known technology.”
That relationship focus, he argues, starts at the farmer and works its way up through the entire supply chain. “We’re dealing with people’s livelihoods. We’re dealing with our food system.” Trust, he says, is the thing that has to be earned first—before any business detail gets resolved. He’s seen what breaks down when it isn’t.
Biochemistry, Bananas, and the Next Decade
When asked which trends will have the biggest impact in the next five to ten years, Cutts doesn’t hesitate: biochemistry. Biostimulants and biological solutions have been around for a while, but he believes the science has finally caught up to the promise. Novel crop protection molecules are running out; the industry is pivoting hard toward naturally derived solutions. “Now is the right time for those BioSolutions to really make an impact,” he says.
He makes the case for going global with a vivid example: the banana. Most Americans don’t know that the variety they eat today replaced one that was wiped out by disease in the 1950s. History, he warns, may be repeating itself—growers in Central and South America are running out of effective modes of action against a new pathogen. A safe, biodegradable solution could be a game changer, but only if companies are paying attention to what’s happening beyond U.S. borders.
“If you stay too focused on what’s around you, you’re going to miss the bigger picture,” he says. It’s an observation that applies equally to global markets, to career trajectories, and to the 4Rs of nutrient stewardship—the framework he keeps returning to as a guide for responsible agronomic practice. “The right source means nothing if it isn’t used the right way.”
The Lesson That Guides Everything
Of all the things – these years in agriculture has taught Trey Cutts, the one he comes back to is the simplest: empathy. It shapes how he leads his team, how he approaches difficult conversations, how he treats customers and competitors. “Everyone in agriculture, at the core of it, is trying to do the right thing,” he says. “Empathy helps me navigate that in a positive way.”
It’s a fitting north star for someone who stumbled into agriculture by accident and stayed because it kept showing him new ways to matter. “I started my career here,” he says of working close to the land, “and I hope to end it there as well.”
Listen to Trey’s Walkout Song:
