A timely correspondence in Nature Plants by Flavell et al. (2025), “Rethinking the need for field trials”, reinforces what the OFE community has long recognized: innovations must be tested under real farming conditions to understand their true value. The authors highlight the ongoing disconnect between controlled-environment plant science and the complex realities faced by farmers, and point to large, multi-site field testing networks (such as the IWYP and IWIN platforms) as essential to bridging this gap. Read this correspondence here.