CropLife Retail Week: Kinze Layoffs, Farmer Sentiment Improvement, and Women in Ag Tech Highlights

Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski discuss layoffs at another ag equipment maker, the latest farmers’ sentiments towards 2024, and more highlights from the recent Women in Ag Tech meeting.

Subscribe to CropLife Retail Week

*Below is a partial and edited transcript:

Eric Sfiligoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj. I’m here again with Lara Sowinksi. How are you doing today?

Lara Sowinksi: Fine. Thank you. Howdy, from El Paso.

ES: Yeah, yeah. Where you actually have things like electricity and working lights and everything else. So. Good. Well, we’ll discuss that a little later in our video, but, for the for the time being, let’s get to some of the news of the week. Of course. you and I have, gotten back from Tech Hub Live, more than a week ago now, and, we’ve been digesting news in the interim, and, I guess I have to start out on a on a somber note, actually, I know that throughout the spring and early summer months, our friends in the ag equipment space have not been having the best of years.

You know, sales have been off, demand has been down. And when those two things come into play, usually that means layoffs or furloughs of workers. And, you know, our friends at John Deere and Agco Corporation both went through those earlier this year. And this past week, we found out that Kinsey Manufacturing, furloughed 25% of its workforce because of lagging demand.

That’s 193 Kinsey employees that are now no longer employed, unfortunately. And, you know, both in the ag industry and ag retail, Kinsey is not a really big player in that space, but it’s a 59 year old company in Iowa. And, you know, they do they do do quite a bit of equipment that growers utilize. So again, whenever we hear news like this, it’s it’s never fun to report but don’t want to ignore it.

And then fingers crossed, you know, we’re getting ready to go to the summer shows and see a lot of equipment manufacturers there, and hopefully they’ll have a little more positive news to share on what’s going to be coming up in 2025.

LS: So yeah, no, that’s that’s great. Yeah, I’ve been watching that news. And likewise other sectors manufacturing in particular. But I guess if there’s a bright note, at least the service sector seems to be performing better overall. So that’s good news. And, I actually have, a nice piece of what was surprising news is, you know, I, do really enjoy, the monthly reports from Purdue and CME Group on the farmers sentiment.

So this latest survey of farmers, and this survey was from July 15th through 19th, kind of had, few nice surprises. just three, positive takeaways to start with. so the Purdue CME Group AG Economy Barometer index, went up by eight points in July. likewise, the index of current conditions rose by ten points.

And the index of future expectations, was also up by seven points. the surveys, showed, you know, not surprisingly, that, you know, high input costs are still the biggest concern for farmers. 34%, indicating that was their biggest concern. in addition, risk of lower crop and livestock prices was another concern. 29%. so citing that, which was up from 25% in June.

So, you know, in the last week, week or two, that a rule Federal Reserve, is kind of hinting that interest rates, you know, are perhaps, you know, reached their highest. And looking at September, they may bring it down a quarter point, maybe even a half point. just listening to CNBC as well the last week or so, it looks like, analysts at CNBC, you’re saying we could see a four point reduction by the end of the year.

So, that was certainly a, you know, some good news. In fact, James, from, produce, center for Commercial Egg. acknowledged, declines in crop prices point to lower production or excuse me, lower producer incomes this year. So the increase in optimism was somewhat puzzling, he said, adding that fewer producers, citing rising interest rates as a primary concern for the upcoming year, corresponds with the modest improvement in their perspectives on capital investments.

However, respondents continue to express hesitancy, hesitancy to make large investments. So, yeah, kind of, you know, good, good news. And it was funny, you know, having come back, as you mentioned, Eric, you know, from Tech Hub Live, just anecdotally talking to people there, it didn’t seem is doom and gloom as I thought at least it, it felt like, okay, we’re you know, we’re going to kind of sit tight.

It’s a cyclical thing. We’re not that surprised. you know, the wild cards, still are. The upcoming elections this year. still, a wild card, to say the least. And, just general uncertainty in the marketplace. But, you know, hopefully things have stabilized. And if we get a little easing on the interest rates, that’ll kind of help a bit.

So, keeping a watchful eye out on that front.

ES: Yeah. Well, no, again, I, I’m when I saw that news as well from our friends at Purdue and, yeah, I, I didn’t expect the number to come back up, but I mean, this this fits the historic pattern. Usually as we start off in the summer, and commodity prices may not be doing very well. Folks are a little more.

Do they’re feeling a little more down than they are as we get through the summer? And again, we’re you know, I believe we’re already in early August. And, so yeah, I it’s good to see that the, the mood is improving in ag and hopefully will continue to be the case going forward.

LS: Yeah, yeah. You know, one other item, Tech Hub Live, is, you know, we’ve mentioned, our Women in Egg tech group met. It was co-located. Our third in-person meeting was co-located with Tech Hub Live. And, we had an awesome, awesome full day of content. And one of the topics that we discussed, one of our WiAT ambassadors, Carolyn Kunkel.

She was talking about a news item from June, and she said, you know, it may, not be getting the attention that it probably does deserve, because there’s probably going to be a little more, consequential things that that happen. And, in particular, she was talking about the Supreme Court, overturning, the Chevron Loper Brite case, from 1984 and, Caroline put together, kind of a summary.

So I’m going to just read a couple of these things and just, you know, in, in general, well, the agencies, the federal agencies, EPA, etc.. yeah. under this case from 1984, they had essentially the authority to interpret the statutes. However, with the Supreme Court overturning this in June, it throws back that authority to the federal courts.

And again, this is just a, you know, not an every case, of course, but, you know, what the the, the fallout from that, according to to Carolyn, she mentioned this is a huge change to administrative law jurisprudence. The likely impacts include and she lists, three of them, an increase in the number of challenges to agency actions, increased likelihood that those challenges will be successful.

And thirdly, and this is what she said, really we’re in. We could be in for quite a shock in that instability while the courts work through these new issues. so this, you know, kind of just to refresh everyone’s memory and, you know, going back to June and it’s probably worth it to kind of go back there and read some news, news items, and analysis from that, because according to Carolyn, this really is a much bigger issue than what the the media may be devoting to it in terms of coverage.

So, you know, I’m thinking certainly the things that we’re looking at right now that the EPA, USDA, etc., etc., you know, what might that look like if now the federal courts are going to interpret that? So anyway, I thought that was a really important item. There was so much, honestly, from just our, our Wyatt, program on the 29th alone.

I know you and I have both been kind of sorting through all the interviews and the content and and so forth that we’ve, we’ve, we’ve covered in the past week or so. but I wanted to start with that and we’ll keep on rolling out some, some from, from Tech Hub Live the coming weeks.

ES: Very good. Well, thanks for sharing that. Hey, I know you switch mentioned Tech Hub Live. One of the things we did new this year at Tech Hub Live, we had a workshop on biologicals and I wanted to give a shout out to our sister publication, Agribusiness Global. they publish for the international market like we go to the domestic market, U.S. they go everywhere else in the world with their, information for the ag retail community.

They’re holding a webinar, live webinar on Wednesday, August 28th at 1030. Eastern Daylight Time called Biological Companies: Stalling or Growing. And I thought that was an interesting, you know, an interesting take on this, considering how many companies there are. I know, somebody at the recent meeting I attended put up a slide showing all the companies and one of those circles circle tracks with all the logos for the companies of the biologicals.

And it was it was very hard to read. It looked like a QR code. I think if you would have put your phone up to it, you would have been able to get some type of scan data because there are a ton of them out there. And again, this webinar is going to look at, are they actually are they actually getting anywhere in the marketplace?

And just to, you know, the webinar is going to have four speakers. but the one in particular I’ll note is our friend Bob Trogele, who was formerly with AMVAC, recently retired, now has his own group called Trial Energy and Consultancy, and he will be one of the, one of the speakers at the webinar. So I encourage you folks, if you’re available on Wednesday the 28th, around 1030 eastern time, check it out.

And, we’ll have a link in here so you can, register if you so choose. And but it should be a fascinating time. So.

LS: Yeah. No, that sounds great. I know that webinar has, you know, in addition to Bob, you know, really good, good speakers. So that will definitely be be a good one.