It's Billion, As In It Starts with a B
That’s billion with a b as Nutrien reports the company sold more than $1 billion in products via its Digital Hub in the first three quarters of 2020. Nutrien leaders shared that’s double their goal for the entire year.
The company first announced its big investment in technology development in 2018 when CEO Chuck Magro promised $100 million invested every year, which coincided with the company’s introduction of the Nutrien customer portal.
When the Digital Hub launched in 2018, our readers named it the New Product of the Year. (You can vote for this year’s new product award here.)
It was also three years ago when Farm Journal launched its first research survey that looked at farmers’ crop input purchases online. And as detailed in our upcoming December cover story, the number of farmers who are buying some of their crop inputs online has nearly doubled since that first survey.
What does this mean for ag retail? The big trend here is more technology in agriculture. There are many threads within that trend, and one of them is online purchasing.
There’s a need for digital strategy. As an example, COVID-19 accelerated existing trends. Nutrien and other retailers that had embraced a digital strategy were positioned to offer their online portals as an alternative to face-to-face sales at just the right time.
That echoes the big takeaway from the panel I moderated for the Ag Retailers Association; the panel included AgVend’s Alexander Reichert, CommoditAg’s John Demerly and EFC Systems’ Ernie Chappell. That nugget: much of this integration with technology takes a change in mindset and consistent leadership.
