MAGIE: Shopping Around
September 17, 2008 
For many visitors to the annual Midwest AG Industries Exposition (MAGIE), the show is part social gathering, part scoping out the competition. However, for the vast majority of ag retailers and custom applicators attending the event, MAGIE is about shopping for products. “I go there looking for new products to potentially buy,” says Greg Yoder, agronomy manager at Danvers Farmers Elevator, Danvers, IL. “It’s as simple as that.”
Other visitors have seen an uptick in their custom application business. This, in turn, has increased the need for new equipment. “We need to replace and upgrade current equipment,” says Floyd Heller of Agland FS, Pekin, IL.
Of course, “new products” and “replace and upgrade” can cover a lot of ground at any given MAGIE show. Are buyers looking for sprayers? Do new tires spur them to make a purchase? Can anything top flashy, new technology to attract attention?
To properly gauge what MAGIE attendees will be looking for, CropLife IRON surveyed past show visitors to find out what products will generate the most interest at the 2007 event in Bloomington, IL. Here, we present the results.
Looking For Guidance
On first impulse, MAGIE is about Big IRON. At any given moment of the event, there are literally dozens of ride-and-drives taking place involving self-propelled sprayers, fertilizer spreaders, and other heavy equipment. Armed with these facts, you might assume that the most popular product category for attendees would involve one of these Big IRON options.
You would be wrong, however.
When CropLife IRON tabulated the most popular product categories from the 108 MAGIE attendees who responded to our survey, guidance systems finished on top. At MAGIE 2007, slightly less than half of the respondents (48%) indicated that guidance systems and equipment would be tops on their show shopping lists.
As an explanation for this impressive showing for guidance systems, we can point to only one factor — the increasing popularity of automatic steering systems. “That’s something that really seems like it can help our business become more efficient,” says Danvers Farmers Elevator’s Yoder. “I’m definitely interested in finding out more about any automatic steering systems that are going to be at MAGIE.”
Considering how automatic steering systems have taken off in the market, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. In its annual Precision Ag Retailers Survey, our sister magazine, CropLife, found that automatic steering systems were being used by 30% of Midwestern dealerships in 2007, up from just 4% in the past three years.
Big IRON Still Big
Finishing a close second to guidance systems in the MAGIE Shopping Survey was the self-propelled sprayers category. According to respondents, 33% of them are looking at these workhorses of the field. In particular, many respondents indicated the recent 13 million-plus increase in corn acres across the country has severely taxed their existing spray rigs.
“Our business is in a constant state of flux,” says Jim Shelton, agronomy division manager for Landmark Services Cooperative, Juda, WI. “Increased corn acres has increased the need to two-trip spray nearly all of our Roundup Ready Corn acres. This is putting much more stress on our sprayers and sprayer operators. We need even larger and more efficient sprayers to keep up as grower-customers further compress their planting season, which reduces our time span available to spray prior to canopy closure.”
Other Big IRON items will also get some long looks at 2007 MAGIE. According to the survey, 23% of attendees are hoping to purchase tenders and 18% have their eyes on spreaders.
“We have some dry applicators that need to be replaced,” says Bart Baker of Shipman Elevator Co., Shipman, IL. “And we will add guidance systems to those when we replace them.”
After guidance systems and pieces of Big IRON, the only other product categories listed by more than one-quarter of respondents were nozzles/spray tips at 27% and storage tanks at 24%.
For a more comprehensive picture of the some of the other percentages garnered by different product categories, you can refer to the product photos in this section of the magazine.
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