TFF Group buys ?

[ollie989898]

Chaffcutter will be starting to panic when the words ‘charge’ are mentioned, the big players in agchem are not going to entertain doing business here, they have established supply lines with financial security.
Answer me this, you are a manufacturer of a product that nobody else supplies, you have been selling that product through three companies within a country for years, what have you to gain by bringing in a fourth business.

I am glad I am not the only one standing on the shore shouting that people appear to have left their paddles behind.

I can only conclude the existing structure suits both manufacturers and distributors- as I have eluded to earlier the manufacturers could very easily sell direct to farm but appear not to want to bother. Clive seems to have secret info however, and is in envy of some twit on the rich list, probably the bloke that runs ABF, an organisation which does a lot more than hawk a few cans of Boogie about.

 

[teslacoils]

I suspect the distributor system worked well with 200000 farmers. Farming is more concentrated and specialised now, so questioning the status quo is wise.

 

[puntabrava]

I am glad I am not the only one standing on the shore shouting that people appear to have left their paddles behind.

I can only conclude the existing structure suits both manufacturers and distributors- as I have eluded to earlier the manufacturers could very easily sell direct to farm but appear not to want to bother. Clive seems to have secret info however, and is in envy of some twit on the rich list, probably the bloke that runs ABF, an organisation which does a lot more than hawk a few cans of Boogie about.

Sorry if you have said what I posted before, I read page one the other day and page 7 today and nothing in between, one of my faults im afraid, have come unstuck in the past with this.

 

[Cab-over Pete]

If you are going to act as, what is in effect, a distributor, I’ll bet the paperwork is horrendous. Just the environmental headaches would be enough to keep people busy for ever I’ll bet.

 

[ajd132]

The way I see it is 3.5 billion is going to leave the industry in the form of subsidies. Distributors have become agronomy and advice companies. They have agronomists, they do the trials, they are now heaving our various software packages, they essentially set the blueprint. How many billions have farmers wasted on variable rate p and k applications of TSP which is instantly locked up at the behest of their SOYL maps? What about the utterly ludicrous article recently with the Hutchinson omnia ‘Helix’ farm where they had paid £5/ha to make the decision that their turning headlands were under performing and to put them into stewardship, you can’t drive on stewardship so bring the headland in, what an absolute load of money for old rope.
My point is this significant amount of money is going and the industry simply will not be able to support all these extra people. The agronomists are fine but there is a huge amount of utterly pointless jobs within the industry and Clive’s idea could help towards capturing back some of the money for the farmers.

 

[Farma Parma]

The way I see it is 3.5 billion is going to leave the industry in the form of subsidies. Distributors have become agronomy and advice companies. They have agronomists, they do the trials, they are now heaving our various software packages, they essentially set the blueprint. How many billions have farmers wasted on variable rate p and k applications of TSP which is instantly locked up at the behest of their SOYL maps? What about the utterly ludicrous article recently with the Hutchinson omnia ‘Helix’ farm where they had paid £5/ha to make the decision that their turning headlands were under performing and to put them into stewardship, you can’t drive on stewardship so bring the headland in, what an absolute load of money for old rope.
My point is this significant amount of money is going and the industry simply will not be able to support all these extra people. The agronomists are fine but there is a huge amount of utterly pointless jobs within the industry and Clive’s idea could help towards capturing back some of the money for the farmers.

Is Variable P&K a waste like? iam using roughly 15t less of combined products & its going where it needs to be
yes the tech to do this isnt for free but my crops are deffo far more even across all the land here in the 5years ive been doing this
It would be nice at some point to just apply it all at a flat rate again but how long off that is who knows
Neighbour who has cut my Cereals for the last 9 seasons says his crops aint nowhere as even & he uses only muck for his P&K dressings

 

[ajd132]

Is Variable P&K a waste like? iam using roughly 15t less of combined products & its going where it needs to be
yes the tech to do this isnt for free but my crops are deffo far more even across all the land here in the 5years ive been doing this
It would be nice at some point to just apply it all at a flat rate again but how long off that is who knows
Neighbour who has cut my Cereals for the last 9 seasons says his crops aint nowhere as even & he uses only muck for his P&K dressings

That’s probably a conversation for a different thread! My problem with vari p and k is that the maps do not take into account of availability in the soil and I’ve done tests with two big companies of the same sample and they were both different. We had a thread on this a while ago don’t want to take this one off topic.

 

[Farma Parma]

That’s probably a conversation for a different thread! My problem with vari p and k is that the maps do not take into account of availability in the soil and I’ve done tests with two big companies of the same sample and they were both different. We had a thread on this a while ago don’t want to take this one off topic.

No Probs i nearly was going to say the same
Yellow Card from Clive (Sorry folks) ?

 

[DrWazzock]

Pardon my scepticism but things evolve the way they do for a reason.
Farmers are good a growing stuff.
Merchants are good at buying and selling stuff.
Butchers and shop keepers are good at retailing stuff.
Farmers cooperatives are good at bulk buying and getting reasonable deals.
Trying to break into this system as a newcomer doing whats been done by experts for ages will be hard work IMO. And it wont be as easy as it looks.
Nuff said.

 

[DrWazzock]

And forum owners are good at running forums.
No need to take over the world though.

 

[ajd132]

And forum owners are good at running forums.
No need to take over the world though.

Clive wasn’t always a forum owner

 

[Farmer_Joe]

Why bother with buying groups or wanting to start a new buying group,
You are looking at the wrong end of the job here are you not,

Now what if you were to look at the other ends of the job, and have a selling group instead, and all club together by selling your goods all through 1 group,
The farmers cooperative could run on the lines of all members log in and list what they have to sell and when, with an area location,
Buyers view the sales online of what's available and roughly the area it's in, but no contact details for buyers to see,
A middle office sorts the deals out,
If plenty of farmers joined up at least half of the farmers in the UK let's say, and a floor price set on all goods, this would restrict the flow of goods and then through time would get a little bit better price

I know it's a stupid idea, yet it might just work,
Think outside of the box

Thats a cracking idea, i often though if everyone got together to get control of sales we would all do alot better, it could be super hard to pull of but you never know till you try that would be awesome!

back to the topic i have to say im still amazed people even question the idea/principle behind it,

its just buying power, order in bulk get a discount, works with goods from virtually all markets,

surly this is just the same, stick everyones orders together,

bulk buy, bigger discount

simples!

 

[Farmer_Joe]

Pardon my scepticism but things evolve the way they do for a reason.
Farmers are good a growing stuff.
Merchants are good at buying and selling stuff.
Butchers and shop keepers are good at retailing stuff.
Farmers cooperatives are good at bulk buying and getting reasonable deals.
Trying to break into this system as a newcomer doing whats been done by experts for ages will be hard work IMO. And it wont be as easy as it looks.
Nuff said.

Jesus man this happens all the time, you rekon james dyson said fu3k it, vacuums been done i will find something easier,

theres scope everywhere to take ideas and improve them especially in this day and age with internet etc

one reason farmers struggle is because inputs seems to constantly increase, my feed has gone up around £50 a tonne in only last few years, i bet people growing get prob less for their grains though!

trying to take more control of input costs sounds like a great area to make savings

 

[kiwi pom]

If you're going to cut out the middle men and work directly with manufacturers - assuming they agree, what if they just say no? - then aren't you going to have to set up your own distribution network?
What's involved with buying a boat load of fert?
Do a deal with a major chemical manufacturer for x thousand litres of a chem who picks it up from the factory? Will the manufacturer organise it or is that what current suppliers do?

 

[ollie989898]

If you're going to cut out the middle men and work directly with manufacturers - assuming they agree, what if they just say no? - then aren't you going to have to set up your own distribution network?
What's involved with buying a boat load of fert?
Do a deal with a major chemical manufacturer for x thousand litres of a chem who picks it up from the factory? Will the manufacturer organise it or is that what current suppliers do?

The fertiliser companies already deal directly with big customers. They have agents that operate doing that on their behalf.

 

[kiwi pom]

As others have mentioned if you want to make a major difference in farm income I think you have to control the selling side as well as buying.
Would that even be allowed?
Lets say TFF Ag supplies is a major success, everyone joins, everyone saves 50% on input costs. Aren't buyers going to realise your COP has decreased so offer you less for your produce?
Then there's the individual farmer competition problem (the real reason there's no money in the job) "I've saved money on fert, now I can pay more for rent" etc.

 

[DrWazzock]

Jesus man this happens all the time, you rekon james dyson said fu3k it, vacuums been done i will find something easier,

theres scope everywhere to take ideas and improve them especially in this day and age with internet etc

one reason farmers struggle is because inputs seems to constantly increase, my feed has gone up around £50 a tonne in only last few years, i bet people growing get prob less for their grains though!

trying to take more control of input costs sounds like a great area to make savings

He had a novel design to bring to the table. With all respect to TFF, a bulk buying group is nothing new, unless you have a unique selling point. The forum is alright for a chat but members have not been vetted for credit rating etc or commitment to the group, whereas established buying groups have built this base over decades.

I think the present distributor logicists have evolved to their present point for a reason. They work fairly well.

But good luck to all efforts to achieve economies.

 

[Clive]

You and I are on the same page with this then. You club together with a load of other farmers and order your Aviator well ahead of time and pay them. It is delivered and you use it.

Now, if you can cooperate with our neighbour over that then you can club together and form a selling group and pay someone to market your grain properly en masse.

That's exactly the idea of this - just as exciting buying groups do but on MUCH bigger scale to get much better deals than even the big groups do right now and using tech to improve the efficiency, therefore, reducing the big admin cos that most big groups end up carrying

But you don’t know they have earned all their money from supplying farmers.


Can there ever be a guaranteed order though Clive?

If the last two months of crap weather have taught us anything, there are no guarantees a crop will be planted.

yes you can guarantee the order - at point of joining a deal the buyer would be committed (deposit), if they want to savings they will have to take a little risk on if they will actually use the product or not ....... most usually we do though, this autumn is rather an exception

Haven't read it all, but we are already a member of huge farming buyers group, so the ship has sailed on that front surely. Are there really any farmers left who don't already benefit from being member of bulk buying group? Not saying it isn't a worthy idea but it's already been done for 40 years by experts, with my own family instrumental in setting it up back in the 1960's.

Existing buying groups are not exactly game-changing on price - I'm not a member of one despite looking at it many times, I can get the same of better prices just ringing about a few suppliers, using FMP and having no membership fee or admin cost makes me better off.

To REALLY work for farmers they need to be MUCH bigger and much more admin efficient in the mechanisms that make them work and that's where I'm coming from with this idea. When a buying group has more buying power than one (or all off maybe !) the big 5 .......... imagine !

Chemical does 'go off'- it can be banned by the EU, it can be affected by long term storage, it can be a dodgy batch. It can lose it's approval.

A lot of distributors are running teams of guys in vans or lorries and even storing and warehousing the stuff. To say they are making 30% or whatever Clive said for doing nothing is a bit much.

I have never suggested distributors make 30% (far from it in more recent years if you look at their accounts) - I've said that's the margin that is on some products, they make a lot less than this after all the wages, cars, storage, office, admin, credit, etc have been paid for. This idea won't have those costs however and what costs it does have will be super-efficient and fit for the 21st century. The comparisons to the USA FBN and Groupon are good examples of what I'm suggesting

 

[Robt]

Think often the written word comes over more harshly than it might in conversation

Older I get though the more inclined I am to just say it how I see it, grumpy old man syndrome is not uncommon

This is so true, I often email my french colleagues and they get the wrong end of the stick. Face to face converation allows the people involved to see emotion in each other. I always prefer skype if i can rather than email

 

[Brisel]

The nay sayers haven't got it.

Teslacoils and @Clive understand it. Where as buying groups approach the big 5 and maybe get 1-2% off, Clive goes direct to manufacturer and gets the full 30% or so off that the distributors currently get.

Make it farmer owned and administered by Clive/tff, then farmers might realise how it works.

Stage 2 in 3-4 years time is where we all save big. The savings means that most UK farmers buy through Clive/tff, the distributors (AGRII etc.) volumes drop to negligible volumes. Then tff puts tebconazole out to tender. The manufacturers then fall over themselves to get the supply contract, as basically it is the volume for most of the teb in the UK. Tff will only buy teb from one manufacturer each tender year.

Currently the manufacturers have 5 big customers to tender to. Clive's idea would create huge negotiating powers if all farmers purchased from one farmer owned organisation.

It's a good idea.

I've always said NFU should do this for both inputs and sales, as they were the only organisation in a position to make it happen. Perhaps they are not the only organisation now in a position to make it happen.

All depends if the logistics can be done efficiently enough to maintain some of the savings.

I'm interested in this but have just read all 8 pages, so apologies if these have been answered already;

Free? In order to get a decent discount someone has to administer the logistics and send a van out with small batches for each farm. What will this offer the manufacturer/wholesaler that would incentivise them to offer a discount to cut out a middleman? For the discount, both parties need to gain something here. I appreciate that IT can replace a lot of people but someone will have to chase up payments or at least set up a card based system, arrange deliveries, sit at the table with suppliers etc. By taking a % instead of a basic membership fee of a couple of hundred quid to pay "fixed" costs plus a % of turnover on top leaves the group organiser seriously exposed. Would it be a not for profit business @Clive ? I would be suspicious is there wasn't something in it for you. If you're adding value to TFF members, why shouldn't you make a quid or tow for your trouble and not inconsiderable risk?

What are the margins on some of these products? IMO the amount varies but I'll bet it's not much on many agchems, especially generics. How much extra value is there to be captured?

As an aside, I'm a member of a very big buying group, who until recently had become rather flabby and inefficient. At the moment they are getting me quality products within a £ or two of FMP prices and they have got me more rebates this year than I've spent on fees and levies. The outgoing CEO has stripped it back to the core buying group it once was. I'd rather pay fees & levies and get the best prices available rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of a reasonable price then a non specific rebate but I'm still happy I'm getting a good deal from a group who sit at the same top table with the manufacturers when buying hundreds of millions of pounds of farm inputs every year. Are there inefficiencies? Yes. Is there a car park by their office with some nice cars parked there? Yep. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.