How CommoditAg Will Help Build Out The Digital Ecosystem For Farmers Edge
“All farmers will buy some ag inputs online, but only a few will buy all of their ag inputs online,” says Wade Barnes, CEO of Farmers Edge.
Barnes is bullish for how online buying will become more of the norm for farmers across North America. It’s the trend toward e-commerce coupled with what CommoditAg has built over the past six years that led Farmers Edge to make its first acquisition in company as a public company and buy CommoditAg.
A week after the acquisition was announced, he gave a one-on-one interview to provide further details. John Demerly also spoke to The Scoop.
“The team at CommoditAg have partnered with local retailers and the existing distribution resources so farmers can do business with the parties they trust and buy online when they choose to do so,” Barnes says. “The retailer carries the relationship with the grower; they are part of the trusted circle. And while technology will make a big impact to agriculture, technology doesn’t deliver fertilizer to a farm, or store fertilizer when the price is going up, or make custom applications to a field.”
CommoditAg has 14 retail partners across the U.S. Barnes aims to grow the footprint with additional retailers in the U.S. and in Canada. Today, CommoditAg has a marketplace offering crop protection, lubricants, plant nutrition and animal nutrition products, along with data services and precision ag products. With more than 50 local fulfillment centers, farmers can select delivery or same-day pickup options.
CommoditAg CEO John Demerly and his team will continue on as Farmers Edge employees.
“We are well positioned to provide grower the data, the insight and the action required to make good agronomic decisions and ultimately good purchase decisions,” Demerly says. “It’s worth noting the CommoditAg marketplace will remain available to anyone for purchases—you don’t have to be a digital agronomy customer to buy.”
Demerly also shares that in the coming months additional product categories and an improved user experience are to be released.
Barnes sees the future of how CommoditAg and Farmers Edge are part of one company as being able to provide a better grower experience and a better retailer experience.
“This platform isn’t going to be orphaned inside Farmers Edge. It will be part of our business and our strategy going forward,” he says.
Barnes lays out four goals for Farmers Edge: integrate with the retailer, get on more farms, digitize agriculture, put tools in the hands of agronomists to make decisions better.
“Technology is coming quickly to ag retail. We will show how our Smart Solution and technology can help them service customers and how we can create value for them,” he says. “Expectations of technology and what it can do are continuing to ramp up. Our focus has to be to continually improve the experience.”
Barnes says technology will become more and more embedded in the farmer’s buying decision.
“We want to help the farmer make a decision to buy something, and if we can help them on our platform with the transaction—great. We are a marketplace with access to many products, but we aren’t tipping the scale or trying to motivate the purchase of one product over another,” he says.
Adding features and adding value provided by the Farmers Edge products are a key focus for Barnes and his team.
“At the end of the day, the farmer has to be comfortable to write a check for technology. He’s always a little more cautious to write a check for technology, but we have to earn our keep. We can show lots of value this year, but two years from now, we have to continue to be better. It’s not easy but it’s how the tech works,” he says.
