AMES, Iowa - July 18, 2002 - E-Markets, Inc. and CROPLAN GENETICS today announced the establishment of the first Virtual Private Network (VPN) between Croplan and a trusted business partner. The VPN completes a fully automated integration between the CROPLAN GENETICS SOAR21 Internet-based seed ordering and inventory management system and the Land O'Lakes JD Edwards, ERP system.

The SOAR21 system, developed and hosted by E-Markets, Inc. enables the over 2,000 CROPLAN GENETICS retail outlets to efficiently manage their customer's order intentions for both CROPLAN GENETICS seed and the seed products of CROPLAN GENETICS seed marketing partners. "SOAR21 has fundamentally changed the way CROPLAN GENETICS has done business with our retailers over the last four years," says Dave Bowser with CROPLAN GENETICS. "By enabling this even tighter integration between E-Markets and our internal systems, we have access to all of the information in real time that we need to serve our customers better."

"We are very pleased to have this new level of connectivity in place for CROPLAN GENETICS", said Bill Boswell, E-Markets CTO. "This VPN provides a secure conduit for us to quickly connect our products and services with additional customer systems on the Land O'Lakes network as well."

CROPLAN GENETICS provides the seed-product component of the Total Farm Solutions system offered by Agriliance, LLC., the agronomy marketing joint venture of Land O' Lakes, Cenex Harvest States and Farmland Industries, Inc.

Land O'Lakes (www.landolakesinc.com) is a national, farmer-owned food and agricultural cooperative, with sales of $6 billion. Land O'Lakes does business in all fifty states and more than fifty countries. It is a leading marketer of a full line of dairy-based consumer, foodservice and food ingredient products across the U.S.; serves its international customers with a variety of food and animal feed ingredients; and provides farmers and local cooperatives with an extensive line of agricultural supplies (feed, seed, crop nutrients and crop protection products) and services.

E-Markets applications eliminate barriers between buyers and sellers; enable information sharing across the agrifood value chain, and streamline back office processes resulting in significant returns for its customers. The company introduced the first online grain production contracting system in 1997 and the first Internet-based input ordering system in 1998. Several thousand grain elevators, ag retail centers, and processors throughout the United States are using E-Markets tools. More than $1.5 billion in transactions have been completed using the suite of Internet-based solutions powered by E-Markets®^SM.

For more information, contact E-Markets at 1-877-674-7419.

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