Market analysts and brokers see the trend to BlackBerry marketing picking up even more steam now that it has reached a critical mass of farmers.
“You sit around with a group of farmers now and three-quarters of them have a BlackBerry or text messaging,” said John Duvenaud, publisher of the Winnipeg-based Wild Oats Grain Market Advisory. “They have some kind of service where they’ve got the futures in their pocket… that’s the difference between now and even three years ago.”
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The PDA isn’t their only marketing tool.
Davenaud says farmers who subscribe to his service tell him they have a home computer as well, set up with a quote system from a provider such as DTN which provides them a steady stream of information.
“When you’re marketing or thinking about marketing, you want to have that,” Davenaud says, “and just about everybody would have that now I would think.”
David Reimann, vice-president of Informa Economics, says the expanding size of farms has encouraged the use of electronic technology. So too has the willingness of young farmers to embrace it.
“Younger guys adapt to this stuff fairly quickly. As it’s become available, they’ve been very quick to seize on it. They don’t need to be out of that communications envelop any longer,” Reimann says, noting farmers once gathered much of their information from weekly farm papers.
“Now as time goes by, they essentially have the capability of being as in touch with the market as any trader is,” Reimann says. “They can access quotes and be on top of developing news within minutes or seconds. It’s been a great equalizer for them, and producers are pretty quick to recognize the value of that.”
But even with excellent computer-based marketing tools, the demand for PDA marketing continues to grow.
ProFarmer Canada’s Mike Jubinville says he gets requests from a number of subscribers to his advisory service to make its web content format more PDA friendly. “There’s no doubt that wireless technology is something that’s coming more and more into play.”
Bill Craddock, a grain farmer and ICE futures trader, notes there’s a lot of information out there now that’s either free or relatively inexpensive.
“I think most people, if they want information, are willing to spend a few hundred dollars a year,” Craddock says.
Alberta grains and oilseeds farmer Kevin Bender often accesses the Weather Network with his BlackBerry to keep tabs on his local region.
“Especially during spraying season or even harvest, I try to keep checking the weather regularly,” Bender says. “I check the radar screen because we often will get showers come through over the mountains here that will just happen within a couple of hours. So it’s fairly accurate and we can try and track where it’s heading and if it’s going to hit us or not.”
Bender also uses his PDA to check his many incoming emails.
“So that way, when I’m on the road or even during seeding and harvest, I can read my emails when I’m in the tractor or unloading the truck at harvest time. It’s just a lot more efficient — I don’t have to sit at home for an hour each night and go through all the day’s emails. I’ve got most of that done by the time I get home at night.”
But still, the office computer is crucial. Bender, who also serves as a director of the Alberta Canola Producers Commission and president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, uses an Excel spreadsheet for keeping fixed cost records and Quicken for accounting, a far cry from 15 years ago, when he did his dad’s books for him by shorthand.
“When I finally moved over to the computer, it was so much easier — if we needed to find a past invoice or receipt, whether it was for the warranty or to check up on something from the past, it was so much more efficient. As well, now when our accountant comes out, we’re usually wrapped up in two or three hours,” Bender says, explaining the process took a whole day before he used a computer. “I’ve got everything totalled for him, he comes out for a morning, we have lunch and he’s done. CG
