The grower you are calling on Thursday has already looked the product you’re going to talk to them about.
With new research from McKinsey, more than 5,500 farmers from across the globe responded with insights on what, when and how farmers are managing their business.
Across the buying journey, farmer preference for digital channels rose from research to repurchase at every stage between 2024 and 2026, and it rose most in the middle — 36% now prefer a digital channel to evaluate and compare products, up 14 points in two years. At the research stage it is 31%.
Preference to buy via a digital channel rose from 14% to 21% in two years.
This illustrates the shape of change—increasing farmers are turning to digital resources to influence the early stage of the purchase journey.
Farmer Trust Is Evolving For Who Calls On Them
The survey separates two kinds of people who call on farmers, and it found them moving in opposite directions.
Nontechnical sales representatives lost 17 points of influence in North America since 2024 — the steepest regional decline anywhere outside Europe. Technical agronomists did not move. They hold at 63% in North America, and 70% among growers 40 and under, seven points above the regional average.
The analysts sharing the research point to the difference is what the caller brings. And the report doesn’t read as growers wanting fewer advisers. It reads as growers stacking them.
“We rely on the crop advisers from fertilizer companies because they are a valuable source of information. They are another tool for us,” a U.S. potato and wheat farmer told McKinsey’s interviewers. “We need good relationships with both our independent agronomist and the fertilizer companies.”
The word in that quote worth sitting with is “tool.” Not partner, not gatekeeper. One among several, kept because it is useful, dropped when it isn’t.
What About Artificial Intelligence?
The McKinsey report points to farmers increasingly using AI, but not for decisions.
Eleven percent of U.S. farmers now pay out of pocket for generative AI, an adoption pace matching where variable-rate technology stood five years after launch. But only 6% of farmers name AI tools or AI search as a trusted source for making a decision.
Growers in McKinsey’s interviews were consistently skeptical of AI’s ability to make agronomic recommendations specific to their farm and their conditions.
“With digital tools, there’s more information out there, so I can ask better questions, but I still need the green light from my agronomist retailer who knows my soil type and my management techniques,” a U.S. corn and soybean farmer said.
The usefulness of AI is most often in gathering information, comparing products, and day-to-day troubleshooting.
So that underlines how farmers may be asking sharper questions to get local validation to their research. McKinsey’s summary of what farmers now expect from human advice is: technically credible, locally relevant, and additive to what they can find online.
The Standard, In The Growers’ Words
Everything a grower can retrieve himself in ten minutes has stopped counting as value delivered. What is left is the part that requires knowing their soils, their equipment, their rotation and their tolerance for risk — and that part is not falling. It held flat through the sharpest spending pullback since 2020.
Which leads to other timely takeaways from this research with two conversations you’ll be having soon if not already.
Fertility. More than 35% of farmers named nutrients as the first thing they cut when margins tighten — the first time that has happened in the survey’s four editions. Fertilizer is also the first category they restore, at 48%.
That combination tells you the cut is a cash decision, not an agronomic one. Which means the valuable insights are rooted in crop fertility insights: what is coming out of the soil, how long it can run, and what it will cost to rebuild.
Generics. Thirty-six percent of North American row-crop growers expect to shift further toward generics over the next two years; 12% expect to move toward branded products. But the split by age is sharp. Among growers 55 and older it is 35% toward generics against 5% toward branded. Among growers under 40 it is 31% and 28% — essentially even. Depending on who is the farm business decision-maker, those demographics could mean two very different conversations to prepare for.
