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Amherst WI | Fertilizer off the river spends 0-48 hours sitting on my hopper bottom and its applied, no need for storage for an operation my size and trucking has worked out great with loads of beans going to the river and back hauling fertilizer back.
Retail Ag has created it's own monster. I will speak in broad brush terms here that certainly doesn't cover everything but in the majority of cases it does.
Retailer over promises and under delivers, they say yes, yes yes, all winter long until spring hits and they are days/weeks behind. If a farmer doesn't have a way to store a semi load of fertilizer or a way to apply their own product this gets much worse. Some coops I have even seen suggest this, however if the high priced retailer is suggesting you own your own infrastructure why do I need to buy from the retailer who is charging me extra to use theirs?
In an effort to never be held accountable the coop has to merge every 3-5 years due to total lack of foresight. Unless a coop has a way to add value they are not needed. They can add value by doing on time professional custom applications (all five of those words are important). They can add value by having reliable grain handling facilities, so you don't have to build your own. They can add value by owning an enterprise that is an end user to the grain they buy like an ethanol plant or soy crushing plant.
If all they do is buy inputs from a wholesaler that you could buy from directly, sell to the same places you could sell to directly they have outlived their intended purpose.
I think we are at a cross roads in Ag retail, you see that with the "tin shed" chem retailer. Oakridge is doing this with feed.
With the margins we are looking at a person can only afford to pay for a fleet of pull type fertilizer spreaders he doesn't use and $45-50+ an acre retailer applied chemistry for so long. | |
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Overhead in Ag
