After announcing the addition of the Grain Business Unit in April, AgVend announced its first partner to build out grain offer management with DTN. Shared retail customers of AgVend and DTN can integrate DTN’s grain tools into the AgVend-built Grower Portals and make grain offers.
AgVend co-founder of AgVend Alexander Reichert says this is another example of AgVend’s broader strategy to build its Grower Portal ecosystem to simplify the digital experience growers can have with their ag retailer of choice.
“Growers want a unifying digital experience,” he says. “There are a lot of great tools that already exist today, and with DTN we can provide growers a way to manage their grain operation and continue to give retailers a best-in-class user experience.”
This expands the existing functionality in AgVend grain toolset including: contracts with eSignature, real-time scale ticket visibility, and commodity price information, and more.
Of AgVend partners that have a grain division, over two-thirds leverage the Grain Business unit through their Grower Portal. The majority of those retailers are subscribers to DTN tools and services.
“We’ve already worked with DTN on cash bids and future commodity pricing. With the addition of on weather integration and grower offer management, it’s been a good partnership to expand,” Reichert says.
AgVend intends to expand its business into energy by the end of the quarter.
“That’s one more business unit that we can add on and helps create the unified business experience we know growers wants and retailers want to offer,” Reichert says.
The road toward a unified digital experience for farmers is a heavy lift being made lighter by partnerships and APIs linking technologies.
“There won’t be a ‘winner take all’ in this market,” Reichert says. “Every retailer uses a different combination of ERP, agronomy platform, grain tool, and financing tools—it’s all different by organization. Connecting the different systems will be the path forward. And a complex system will have its complexities increase but it won’t be obvious to the end user.”
Reichert says AgVend report a high adoption rate of farmer users for its grower portals citing that retail customers saying there’s a 70% adoption rate of key customers within the first six months.
