Every fall, my mind tends to switch from thinking about the year that is to wondering what the year ahead will be like. I’m sure many of you are the same way, particularly as the harvest season winds down.
Here at the CropLife Media Group offices, I have a pretty good market barometer when it comes to an industry outlook – the CropLife 100 survey form. This annual gauge of the marketplace temperature, financially speaking, is a great way for me to tell how the ag retail business is playing out and what’s ahead in the coming year.
As I write this column, it’s been just over one week since the 2010 CropLife 100 forms went out to dealerships and cooperatives across the country. So far, I’m encouraged with the early returns.
Firstly, there’s the rate of returns. Normally after one week in the field, I would be lucky to have seven to 10 forms back in office (approximately three weeks before the first deadline rolls around). This year, however, one-fifth of the CropLife 100 companies (20) have returned their surveys ahead of deadline. With one exception, these returned forms come from CropLife 100 members that ranked between Nos. 11 and 90 on the 2009 list. This tells me that these companies couldn’t wait to share their 2010 news with me. (Indeed, a few companies sent me e-mails in the past few years asking to get their survey forms early so they could return them!)
Then there’s the data contained within these surveys. As always, one of the final questions on the form asks ag retailers to rank their outlook on the year ahead using a 10-point scale (1 being extremely negative to 10 being extremely positive). The past few years, the number of pessimistic dealerships and cooperatives tended to run about even with the optimistic ones at a 50/50 split.
Looking ahead to 2011, however, things appear to be on a significant upswing. According to the 20 surveys already in-house, the percentage of ag retailers believing the coming year will be positive sales-wise stands at 80%. While it’s early and this number will probably drop as more forms are returned, this is in sharp contrast to 2008 and 2009, when the negative views represented approximately 70% of the early totals.
Overall, I would say all this bodes well for the marketplace in 2011. But don’t take my word for it – just listen to the opinions of some of the nation’s top ag retailers.
