Agronomic Advise Received!

[Grass And Grain]

Fair comment.

Maybe it depends how many customers they want to lose.

Edit.
The bigger the supermarkets have got, the more they have done to win customers. Think Sunday opening, 24hr opening, home delivery.

Edit again.
No-one has to reduce margins by supplying to buying groups, buy they do cos otherwise they lose market share and turn over.

As soon as price comparison sites get going it will be hard for any one supplier to stop them.

 

[franklin]

Q. Would you want the hassle of "rating" or recommending a generic, to save a small quantity, then have to deal with an unhappy farmer

Anyone offer pay before delivery for a discount?

I for one would need a *hefty* discount to put money upfront with an unknown new supplier rather than through my buying group or say 3 months after delivery from a major supplier.

Also, what is the likely cost for insurance if you are suggesting / recommending chemicals to farmers? I imagine for an indy agronomist that could be quite large.

I think there are changes coming for agronomy, but I think it is more likely to be in the form of discounted seed / chem packages from suppliers. Think "the new wheat, bred for the wet west with associated chem package" all from say Syngenta. The reason they are moving into seed, especially hybrids, is so that they can own the IP and essentially license it to you, and then have provisos for what chem to apply. How long before the next wonder fungicide gets through PSD tests recommended only for certain wheat varieties? Think Syngenta hybrid barley, but when they only offer you the seed if you take the chem like Clearfield.

Tricky to make a business model, when the supply are already consolidated, and the fragmented buyers can already get together and bulk order / pre-commit through a group. I'm not pissing on bonfires, but surely those farmers who are already skilled in IT dont need this, and those who are less confident have agronomists that can do this?

Here is an alternative idea - a website to link grain farmers with straw to sell with stock farmers who need it? Always shocks me to see my straw carted off to a power station and stock farm 5 miles away getting straw from elsewhere. I think straw partnerships could be a good online / database thing. The potential to cut down a lot of road transport must be quite good, hence there must be a bit of margin to squeeze. The benefit is that stock farmers must have a reasonable idea of what straw they want, and I have a reasonable idea of how much an acre produces. Add in storage potential, need to move by a certain date etc and i'm sure a transport algorythm would work better than the dicking about at standing straw auctions. And central holding of money of course.

 

[Hampton]

Q. Would you want the hassle of "rating" or recommending a generic, to save a small quantity, then have to deal with an unhappy farmer



I for one would need a *hefty* discount to put money upfront with an unknown new supplier rather than through my buying group or say 3 months after delivery from a major supplier.

Also, what is the likely cost for insurance if you are suggesting / recommending chemicals to farmers? I imagine for an indy agronomist that could be quite large.

I think there are changes coming for agronomy, but I think it is more likely to be in the form of discounted seed / chem packages from suppliers. Think "the new wheat, bred for the wet west with associated chem package" all from say Syngenta. The reason they are moving into seed, especially hybrids, is so that they can own the IP and essentially license it to you, and then have provisos for what chem to apply. How long before the next wonder fungicide gets through PSD tests recommended only for certain wheat varieties? Think Syngenta hybrid barley, but when they only offer you the seed if you take the chem like Clearfield.

Tricky to make a business model, when the supply are already consolidated, and the fragmented buyers can already get together and bulk order / pre-commit through a group. I'm not pissing on bonfires, but surely those farmers who are already skilled in IT dont need this, and those who are less confident have agronomists that can do this?

Here is an alternative idea - a website to link grain farmers with straw to sell with stock farmers who need it? Always shocks me to see my straw carted off to a power station and stock farm 5 miles away getting straw from elsewhere. I think straw partnerships could be a good online / database thing. The potential to cut down a lot of road transport must be quite good, hence there must be a bit of margin to squeeze. The benefit is that stock farmers must have a reasonable idea of what straw they want, and I have a reasonable idea of how much an acre produces. Add in storage potential, need to move by a certain date etc and i'm sure a transport algorythm would work better than the dicking about at standing straw auctions. And central holding of money of course.

the next change will see the big firms fragment and lots of little companies starting up, similar to the late 80's early 90's.
Too many of these big firms are now far to top heavy.

 

[franklin]

Great. Another 10,000 farmers to be bummed by the 4 ag-chem firms, 3 fert firms, hand-ful of merchants and their yellow-paged marketting rag.

 

[Grass And Grain]

Wonder how many buying groups there are? Should they consolidate to keep one step ahead of the suppliers. Eg. 4 suppliers therefore let's only have 3 buying groups.

I take @static point that there could be greater efficiencies made more quickly by looking at completely different things, eg. the straw trading example.

Just trying to stay on topic, and I do believe it's more likely that the industry will have changed in 10 years time than remain exactly like it is structured today.

 

[Hampton]

Wonder how many buying groups there are? Should they consolidate to keep one step ahead of the suppliers. Eg. 4 suppliers therefore let's only have 3 buying groups.

I take @static point that there could be greater efficiencies made more quickly by looking at completely different things, eg. the straw trading example.

Just trying to stay on topic, and I do believe it's more likely that the industry will have changed in 10 years time than remain exactly like it is structured today.

I'm quite confident it will change. There is so many layers of management in the distributors that it is driving the prices up.

 

[richard hammond]

I'm quite confident it will change. There is so many layers of management in the distributors that it is driving the prices up.

Every management layer needs a profit to cover costs..

 

[franklin]

Oh I know it will all be changed by then. Most likely all straights will be co-formulated with spiroxamine - hur hur hur!

Whatever I may think about consolidation of supplies and the lack of co-operation between buyers, Cereals and LAMMA never seem to get any smaller with new firms having a go. With ag-chem I just see:

a) big, established players who know what they are doing,
b) lots of laws about the saftey of the stuff you are supplying / recommending.
c) insurance risk

Want to make some massive money from us at the expense of the ag-chem firms? Make a robot that will rogue BG from between rows of cereal crops. Or something on tracks with a magic eye that will drive over the crop, spot BG and remove / kill them. The technology should allow it to be done. I've been playing on my cousin's VR setup and its bloody amazing what a comuter will do. The idea that you could train a computer to look at a picture of say 3 square metres of ground, find the BG and spray a tiny quantity of roundup on each plant, then move on and repeat. That's something that we have a known cost in terms of chemicals. Look how drones have taken off?

Now that's technology sorting a real problem in ag-chem.

 

[Grass And Grain]

Don't need a robot here to rogue blackgrass. Dad does it.

Bit worried he'll be worn out one day though.

 

[ollie989898]

You lot will only have yourselves to blame when there are 3 big companies bending you over because you forced the smaller companies out in your race to the bottom.

If you want to confuse price with value thats fine but dont forget even your fabled buying groups are not supplied direct by manufacturers.

Even Richard Hammond is not immune when there are craniums in my region willing to walk crops for £3/acre. Can you compete with that?

You are dreaming if you think small firms will emerge from the likes of Argii or whoever fragmenting because the big maufacturers will simply not deal with small companies because their volumes are too small.

Yes even independents cannot deal direct with BASF which begs the question why would anyone deal with the big names who sell to the quote trade only then to flog the same product for more money to 'loyal' customers???

Its all a race to the bottom which will end in tears when you consider that it is the non generic end of the business who are paying for the development of new products.

 

[marcot]

You lot will only have yourselves to blame when there are 3 big companies bending you over because you forced the smaller companies out in your race to the bottom.

If you want to confuse price with value thats fine but dont forget even your fabled buying groups are not supplied direct by manufacturers.

Even Richard Hammond is not immune when there are craniums in my region willing to walk crops for £3/acre. Can you compete with that?

You are dreaming if you think small firms will emerge from the likes of Argii or whoever fragmenting because the big maufacturers will simply not deal with small companies because their volumes are too small.

Yes even independents cannot deal direct with BASF which begs the question why would anyone deal with the big names who sell to the quote trade only then to flog the same product for more money to 'loyal' customers???

Its all a race to the bottom which will end in tears when you consider that it is the non generic end of the business who are paying for the development of new products.

"Even your fabled buying groups are not supplied direct by the manufacturers"

Are you sure about that?

 

[Brisel]

"Even your fabled buying groups are not supplied direct by the manufacturers"

Are you sure about that?

No he's not. He works for a regional independent distributor, so he would say that

Some good points though, but I'm not paying extra just to keep the likes of Agrii service agronomists in flash cars. Collectively, he is right if we don't support the majors but I still need to buy low and sell high. Ironically, most of my buying group chems come from Agrii...

 

[marcot]

No he's not. He works for a regional independent distributor, so he would say that

Some good points though, but I'm not paying extra just to keep the likes of Agrii service agronomists in flash cars. Collectively, he is right if we don't support the majors but I still need to buy low and sell high. Ironically, most of my buying group chems come from Agrii...

My buying group told me yesterday that they have set up a subsidiary to do exactly that ....buy direct from the manufacturer....

 

[Wheatseeker]

My buying group told me yesterday that they have set up a subsidiary to do exactly that ....buy direct from the manufacturer....

This is the future if we want competitive prices and not to be shafted by what has become an oligopaly. There is a chunky margin in the supply chain at present and the manufacturers want more of it and we need to minimise it.
Buying groups can only amalgamate if they deal direct and become distributors. This is proven whenever there is a shortage of products as current distribution will always cover high margin service clients before low margin buying groups. That is the achilles heel of the current model and can encourage 'shortages'.
Farmer owned US co-ops already do this. Everyone pulling in the same direction, distribution profits go back to farmers, they have their own agronomists with no conflicted interests, control of product and distribution etc etc.
Next progression is who owns the 'big data'.In their case it is in safe hands.....

 

[Brisel]

My buying group told me yesterday that they have set up a subsidiary to do exactly that ....buy direct from the manufacturer....

Interesting. Which buying group? Based in Norfolk or Suffolk, thinking of the 2 main ones in your part of the world?

Who delivers the chemical? I'll bet it's one of the big distributors

 

[Brisel]

This is the future if we want competitive prices and not to be shafted by what has become an oligopaly. There is a chunky margin in the supply chain at present and the manufacturers want more of it and we need to minimise it.
Buying groups can only amalgamate if they deal direct and become distributors. This is proven whenever there is a shortage of products as current distribution will always cover high margin service clients before low margin buying groups. That is the achilles heel of the current model and can encourage 'shortages'.
Farmer owned US co-ops already do this. Everyone pulling in the same direction, distribution profits go back to farmers, they have their own agronomists with no conflicted interests, control of product and distribution etc etc.
Next progression is who owns the 'big data'.In their case it is in safe hands.....

Ah, vertical integration. Can a farmer run group do this as efficiently as an existing national distributor? Bypassing the trade and their profit margins is one thing. Doing it better than them is another IMHO.

 

[Wheatseeker]

Not with a board of farmers.

 

[marcot]

Interesting. Which buying group? Based in Norfolk or Suffolk, thinking of the 2 main ones in your part of the world?

Who delivers the chemical? I'll bet it's one of the big distributors

Norfolk ....and they are using their own logistics.....

 

[Brisel]

That will ensure that next year's fees go up again then. I will do some investigating - I'm also a member of a Norfolk based group that might be the same one as you.

 

[david]

My buying group told me yesterday that they have set up a subsidiary to do exactly that ....buy direct from the manufacturer....

Don't you boys on the mainland have a new distributor in the making with AF Logic ?