In truth, few of us really even consider it.
Despite all the talk about refocusing our businesses
on the consumer, it s a tough sell. It
already takes all our time to get as efficient as
possible in the field and in the barn, plus looking
after all the endless demands of farming, from
working in the shop to working on the books. So
when would we sit down for a strategic re-think
of our business models?
But there s a cost to the implicit assumption
that we don t need to change. Diversifying
into alternative markets may be expensive and
risky, but are our mainline commodities really so
risk-free?
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Martin gooch, director of the Value Chain
Management Centre at the george Morris
Centre in guelph says it s time to re-visit our
thinking about diversification, mainly because
there are new opportunities to evaluate and
proactively manage our value chains.
gooch s message is blunt: to make better
margins, we need to learn what happens to our
product beyond the farmgate. then we need to
figure out how to extract value from that knowledge.
to do this we need to build relationships
with the other businesses involved in getting
our product to the consumer and learn what
consumers and retailers want.
only then can we think of ways to differentiate
our offer.
