Community Highlights: Meet Carolyn Wingate of WinBiologics

Today we’d like to introduce you to Carolyn Wingate.

Hi Carolyn, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
My home and business locations are both about 10 minutes outside Wichita. Our family farm is located in Andover, KS, and our business warehouse is located in Park City, KS right off the highway so it’s ideal for distribution and logistics.

My grandparents and great-grandparents had a beautiful 10,000-acre cow-calf ranch in eastern Kansas. After my great-grandparents passed away the siblings couldn’t agree, and the ranch was sold. Agriculture and animals in my family were a way to lose a fortune and always be poor. Moving to the city may have taken me off the land, but they couldn’t take the love of agriculture out of me.

I was always drawn to anything to do with horses, cattle, flowers, and gardening; I love the land. Fresh out of K-State I was offered a job at Agrium Advanced Technologies, now Nutrien, one of the largest ag companies in the world.

After many years and some very hard lessons working in a man’s world, I had grown up, got married, and had a baby on the way and at some point in my health journey, I decided daily exposure to the chemicals in the warehouse was not optimal for me or my unborn child.

So, quit cold turkey, there I was, pregnant and with no real plan for the next steps. I took on odd jobs and landed at a precision ag company helping with research and data collection.

Next up was a micronutrient company learning more about plant health and micronutrients and this is where the magic began to happen. In my work at the micronutrient company, I met Jessica Gnad (Executive Director for a non-profit called Great Plains Regeneration), my spark.

Jessica was instrumental in introducing me to other women in the industry (there aren’t many of us!) at a Soil Health U conference in Salina, KS and we became… #TheSoilSisters. These ladies pushed me toward bringing out what was really important to me in the agriculture world in regards to soil health and violà! WinBiologics was born!

Along with some very intelligent chemists and a few others that shared my passion for soil health and plant nutrition.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
2021-2022 have been an extremely challenging time to start a business. From raw ingredients to packaging materials, every aspect of manufacturing and pricing has been impacted by COIVD or inflation.

As you know, we’re big fans of WinBiologics. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
WinBiologics is different from most fertilizer companies because our focus is soil health which directly impacts human health.

We try to increase mineralization and sugar levels in plants to a point where they have a high enough sugar (Brix) that we don’t need to spray fungicide or insecticide. Crops with a high brix also have significantly higher nutrient density than chemo crops.

Dead/toxic/polluted soils grow plants that need rescue treatments (think chemotherapy) that don’t necessarily nourish your body. Most of us know that chemotherapy is often absolutely necessary to save a life. It’s the same with our crops; sometimes we need to rescue them with a fungicide or insecticide.

However, over time we have seen these rescue treatments become standard practice instead of the treatment we use only as needed. Spoiler alert organic does not mean chemical-free.

If you are interested in food and human health I highly recommend the documentary on Netflix “Kiss the Ground” or the book by Josh Tickell. Kansas is a hotbed of folks that are leading the way on a revolution of reversing CO2 and agriculture is both the problem and the solution to climate change.

Another part of what I specialize in is connecting growers with good crop consultants that will do the best for their farm; thinking about soil and human health and trying to help connect all the dots in helping them get all the resources they need to be successful.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love where I live and my affection for Kansas agricultural communities runs deep. I always feel at home in any Kansas ag community.

I travel a lot for work and can assure my husband that if I were to break down in any one of the many small towns across Kansas that I’d be taken care of by help with my transportation, a place to sleep a good meal.

Contact Info:

• Website: WinBiologics.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/winbiologics/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winbiologics
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WinBIOLOGICS

Image Credits
Amy Sharp Photography