The 2023 CropLife 100 Preview
November 12, 2023 
This year marks a special event for our magazine’s annual CropLife 100 report — a 40th anniversary! Next month, readers can look forward to our regular ag retail marketplace report based upon data from the nation’s largest ag retailers.
In this column, I will do what I’ve done the past several years gathering our CropLife 100 information: Provide some tidbits of data that won’t make the final report, but that are interesting, nonetheless. So, without further delay, here are three factoids from the 2023 CropLife 100 survey.
Grower Consolidation Slows
Over the past several years, one of the most commonly cited worries among CropLife 100 ag retailers has been consolidation. Primarily, this has involved the supplier and ag retailer levels of the business. However, grower consolidation has also been a concern.
During the COVID years of 2020 and 2021, this trend picked up a bit. In 2023, however, grower consolidation slowed somewhat. According to the survey, 66% of respondents saw less grower consolidation or the same level as was present in 2022, compared with 59% in the previous year’s survey. Only 34% of CropLife 100 retailers saw an increase in grower consolidation, down from 41% in the 2022 CropLife 100 survey.
E-Commerce is Flat
About a decade ago, e-commerce was all the rage in ag retail. As Farmers Business Network and other entities devoted to internet input sales began operating, many traditional ag retailers attempted to follow suit. And during the COVID years, the trend among CropLife 100 ag retailers picked up considerably as more grower-customers used remote means instead of in-person ones to order their growing season supplies. In fact, approximately 50% of CropLife 100 retailers were offering e-commerce during these times.
But that time is apparently over. In the 2022 CropLife 100 survey, 65% of respondents reported offering “no e-commerce option” to their customer base. And this percentage crept up again in 2023, to 66%.
As for the 34% of respondents that do offer these services to customers, third-party manufactured systems are the most popular, used by 21%, an increase from 19% in 2022. Auction-based services also saw their percentage increase among dealers, up from 1% in 2022 to 3% this year. Home-grown systems were the least popular, used by only 10% of respondents — a decline of 5% from the 2022 survey results.
Not Sure About AI
Technology adoption has been all the rage this past year as drones and semi-autonomous vehicles have dominated much of the ag news. But when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), ag retailers are a bit more cautious.
When asked what role AI might play in the upcoming growing season, half of the respondents said it was still too early to tell. Another 35% thought AI’s place in the industry would be “small” in 2024. Only 15% foresee such systems playing a “big role” in the nation’s crop fi elds.
As always, the complete 2023 CropLife 100 report will appear next month.
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