Dr. Corrine Alexander, Associate Professor of Agronomics at Purdue University told participants at the 2010 BASF Innovation into Agriculture Symposium that innovation is vital in the agriculture industry today.
“Innovation is very important,” Alexander said. “This is a very competitive industry where everybody is innovating; everyone is doing a better job than what they have done in the past. Farmers are recognizing this so now if a retailer wants to stand out and serve those farmers really well they are going to have to innovate and find something new that differentiates them from the rest of the suppliers.”
Dr. Alexander used information from 2 surveys in her presentation. The first survey is the 2008 Large Commercial Producer’s Survey which consisted of more than 2,500 responses focusing on commercial producers with gross sales of over half a million dollars or more. The second study was of retailers who were asked the exact same questions that were asked of the farmers, and the answers of the two different groups were compared.
“One of the things we were surprised by was that there has always been this very large group of balance buyers -buyers that want a good price, good product performance, good support services and all the rest,” said Alexander, “In the past we have always thought of that group as about 35 to 40 percent of the market but we found coming into 2008 that group has gotten a lot larger.”
Alexander said that as many as 59 to 69 percent of farmers are balance buyers who say they want it all. “They want top product performance for a fair price with great customer service. And they expect it all. That makes it very tough for retailers because they have to deliver everything to their market and when the balance buyers are 59 to 69 percent of the market the retailers don’t have a choice. They are going to have to excel on everything for their customers in order to maintain their customers.”.
Dr. Alexander said that although producers want and need the innovation they get from large companies, they want to know how those products and that information is relevant to their area. Farmers see great value in having a local dealer or local crop consultant who can take the innovation and apply it to their farming operation.
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