Clayton Cunningham, Seed Hub manager at Crops 63 for Ceres Solutions, shares the main driver in farmers picking their seed choices.
The team at Crops 63 was awarded the 2022 Business Innovation Award. He shares more about how and why seed was the tip of the spear for the cooperative in their digital journey in The Scoop podcast.
“We used to work off spreadsheets and do everything on hand tickets when we would dispatch seed,” Cunningham says. “ It was kind of a nightmare.”
After a 10-year journey, the seed sales, receiving, warehousing, and dispatching is fully digital. Cunningham says it’s been hard work but has paid off big time for their business.
“When a farmer would ask a salesman about seed availability, I used to say ‘Hang on, let me run out to my warehouse.’ Then I’d count the bags to see what we had on supply. Now, we have a live inventory and with the click of a button I can tell them yes or no,” Cunningham explains.
Located in Perrysville, Indiana, Crops 63 serves as a seed hub for nine counties and 150 farmer accounts. The co-op represents three seed companies for corn, soybeans and wheat—with additional companies for cover crops.
He shares the digitization of the backend of the business hasn’t taken away from the ‘personal touch’ of their seed sales.
“I think that’s the heart and soul of the co op is having that–that connection and being that trusted advisor. The technology just makes it so we can make their jobs easier and also make our jobs easier,” he says.
And Cunningham gives insights in how selling and delivering seed is changing, per farmers’ preferences. He shares these four insights into recent trends and more:
- Farmers make data-driven decision based on performance
- More corn seed is sold for 2023 than initially thought
- Farmer excitement about new products in the seed space drove some of the interest in corn
- Cover crop seed sales have increased
