CropLife Retail Week: CropLife 100 News, Farmer Internet Access Lacking, and Biologicals Survey Data
August 16, 2024 Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski discuss the 2024 CropLife 100, a report on farmer internet access, and a new survey on biologicals.
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*Below is a partial and edited transcript:
Eric Sfiligoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj, Editor. CropLife and CropLife Iron here again with my favorite person in the world talking about agriculture with Lara. So you, Laura, how are you doing?
Lara Sowinksi: Wow. Well thank you. likewise. My favorite person. I have a new, new studio, new digs or something.
ES: What do you go? Well, yeah. Yeah, these. You know, we recently moved offices at Meister, so this is the the new studio, presentation for now. It’s a it’s a work in progress, but we’ll we’ll be working on it, but. Yes. you you know, you won’t. You’ll be seeing me in a slightly different background when I’m in studio than you’ve been used to.
But again, most of the viewers won’t notice because our our goal is, of course, to spread information, little entertainment along the way. And, that’s what we’re here again this week. So great. So, so, hey, Miss Laura, I wanted to mention, of course, this, in the past week or so, I have finally got around. It is that time of year I sent out our 2024 CropLife 100 surveys to the top 100 retailers from last year’s survey, and also added a couple of companies that I’ve discovered or have reached out to me in the interim, asking to get forms.
So we have those out. and I actually wanted to say, if you folks could out there, if you have the form sitting in your inbox, I was trying to get them back by the end of August. September 1st. I know that’s a Sunday, but, you know, we’ll we’ll, you know, I’m sure some folks can get it to me before then.
And, I’ve already got about five folks that have gotten survey forms back to me. And, and again, Laura, this time of year, it’s a little it’s always a little, sad when I send out the forms because invariably I get notes back from companies saying that, you know, that they’ve sold the company or the company has never since our last survey merged with somebody.
And I wanted to give a shout out to one of the companies, long standing member of the top 100, Stanislaus Farm Supply in Modesto, California. I visited them in the early 2000s and, they sent me a note back with the CropLife 100 form saying that as of May 1st, they were now part of Valley Agronomic, which again, very big company in the, in the CropLife,100 in the top 15, I believe.
And, adding the revenues together, the two companies, I’m sure that’ll boost them up even further. The list. But we’ll see when I get Valley’s form in, hopefully later in the month or in early September. What the, the numbers look like, but, but I just wanted to say, thank you, Stanislaus, for all you’ve done with us over the years.
And we will miss you guys. yeah. I agree, it’s it’s it’s interesting to compare you know, year over year how things change as far as the rankings. And like you said, companies are required or, unfortunately, sometimes go out of business. So, I know, as you mentioned, you know, we have received inquiries from companies that are kind of new to us or certainly new to, the list, potentially.
So, yeah. get those surveys filled out and returned back to Eric and. Yeah. And hey, one other thing I wanted to go over before I kick this to you. Of course, we’ve been talking a lot about, agtech the last few weeks because we recently, of course, held our our Tech Hub live event in Des Moines. And so Agtech is on top of mind for a lot of folks.
But one of the things that goes along with ag technology, of course, is connectivity and communication. And that usually means internet. And I was actually I ran across the story. I was kind of surprised to read a little bit that, it’s talking about the U.S. census data from 2022, and it mentioned that for agriculture, for farmers, 22% as of 2022 do not have access to the internet still.
Well, yeah, I was I was surprised it was that high and that a little, little less than a quarter of the marketplace for farmers is still internet free or unable to access the internet. and then they broke it down by states and, you know, most of the states that still are lacking in internet access are in the South, and the state of Mississippi actually leads the country.
Maybe not the right word, but has the highest percentage of, growers unable to access the internet. In 2017, 66% of the farmers in Mississippi Mississippi had access to the internet. And in 2022, that number has gone up, but it’s still only 73.3%. So, yeah, I know, I’m I’m surprised that in this day and age, there are folks, unfortunately, who do not have internet access.
I’m sorry to read that. Yeah, yeah, actually, and it is a good story item. I remember, and it probably was last year when we reported on this, you know, efforts by the federal government to fund, broadband across the US and, you know, kind of, the numbers across the board, it would be a good follow up story.
I’ll kind of dig into that a bit and see where that stands. Yeah, no, that would be good as a follow up. So, viewers, stay tuned. We’ll get back to you on that one. So, hey, I think you said you had a couple of items to share as well, so I will kick this over to you, ma’am.
LS: Yeah. Thank you. so this is new research. the, article itself, was by one of my favorites, Jennifer Marsden over at funder muse. this is recent research, by Stratovation Group. along with The Fertilizer Institute, Agricultural Retailers Association and declares that’s, a lobbying group, and it correlates with what, we’ve been, finding, you know, as, you know, we’ve had the Tech Hub Live that recently concluded we had two workshops, drones as well as biologicals, in the row crops space.
And as we’ve kind of, circled back with the attendees on the biologicals workshop as well as the presenters, that was Dr. Andrea Arias from Jord Bioscience and Jacob Parnell from Biome Makers. lot of good feedback. the workshop itself was well received, good content, good impression overall from both attendees as well as the presenters.
And, so this, study, from the Stratovation Group, finds that, according to their 2022 research, 83% of US row crop producers and farmers were aware of the term biologicals that, awareness of biologicals in 24 jumped 87%. with awareness on specific subcategories such as bias stimulants and bio fertilizers, grew 14%. So, just under half, 45% of US road crop producers say they currently purchase or use, biological products, which is up from the 37% in the survey from 2022.
So, a couple comments in this, article that Jennifer Marston put together, one of the comments, as to why are we seeing the increase part partly what’s, adding to that is that the traditional crop protection products, the chemicals, you know, that we talk about, you know, they’re kind of they’re kind of know whether it’s dicamba, glyphosate, etc..
You know, a lot of challenges to those traditional, chemical products. So that’s obviously, kind of boosting awareness and, use of biologicals. but one of the things and, again, this really correlates to what we discovered during the workshop, Tech Hub Live is that, really more education, continued education around the use, the application best practices and of the high, how, when and where to get the best, performance.
So, good to see that awareness and and use is growing. And I think, what we’re finding as well, you know, as more data, becomes available, more, again, kind to, kind of to really for the best practices so that when people do invest and use it, that, you know, the yield and their expectations, around what they, are looking for as far as performance, they’re able to achieve that.
ES: So, that was good and good news. Nice. Nice to see that, you know, the market and what we experienced with the workshop at Tech Hub Live, some nice, some nice, you know, nice smooth movement around the space that we’ve kind of been watching for a while. So. All good. Yeah. No. And I know myself, I just was attending, a couple of weeks ago.
Mosaic event in Illinois where they were talking about their biologicals, of course, the companies involved in that space with their bioscience group and it was interesting. The speakers there had said something I had not heard up until now. the fact that, you know, most biologicals are getting lumped with crop protection products and, you know, the the advisors to the growers are saying, you know, you know, this is a supplement to your crop protection product.
But the Mosaic folks pointed out that, you know, biologicals, a lot of them are living organisms. And if you want a parallel in crop inputs, that is a living organism and you’re deciding how to use it in your field, it would be seed. So their suggestion was to treat biologicals more like seed as opposed to a crop protection and a traditional crop protection product.
So. Right. I like I said, I wrote a story about that. It’s in the newsletter and online at Croplife.com. So if you want to see what, the folks at mosaic had to say about biologicals, check that out for yourself. Yeah. Actually, and you know, we kind of compared notes, this past week as well because I had, the great pleasure of visiting with the Mosaic Company earlier this year, down on their Tampa, Florida, offices.
LS: And Matt Sowder, who, you know, heads up their, but bioscience division. He was saying that and I thought that was a really interesting way to look at it, as he mentioned. So, yeah. do indeed check out Eric’s article on the newsletter on that. That’s that’s good stuff. I like it. Good deal. So all right. Well, hey, I know, it is summer, of course, getting towards the end of summer.
ES: I know my, my son is getting ready to start back at school. I’m sure a lot of folks are getting their kids ready for back to school, much to their, annoyance because they like the summertime off or delay, but nonetheless, parents are happy. The kids. The kids will have someplace to go for about 6 to 8 hours a day.
But anyhow, one of the other things that takes place, of course, towards the end of August is the annual Midwest Ag Industries Exposition, The MAGIE Show in Bloomington, Illinois, and that will be taking place middle of next week. And I will be there along with the CropLife crew. we will be making the rounds of the fairgrounds, in Bloomington.
And seeing what we can see in terms of new equipment and existing equipment, upgraded equipment. Ride and drives and lots of food. Of course, pork on a stick is always one of my favorites. I usually have about a half dozen of those myself, and I’m sure I’m not alone because they are quite tasty. And again, since it’s a pork on a stick, you can walk around and eat it and it tends not to be very messy.
It’s a little different than an ice cream cone, which could be melting in the heat. So. But I will be at the MAGIE show. So in next week’s video, I will have some highlights from the show, along with pictures and hopefully video clips. And of course will be announcing who the Showstopper award winner was for 2024. So yeah, I know there are all we there are already companies sending me little tidbits on, hey, our product is this and come and see it and we think it should win because of this reason.
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