by Ben Nuelle LISTEN: money-matters-10-28-16
A new transparency report finds price discrepancies among seed sales.
Charles Baron is co-founder of Farmers Business Network, an independent network of farmers across America.
FBN democratizes farm information by making the aggregated analytics available to all FBN members.
Baron says the company began looking into chemical price transparency and now seed price transparency.
We would see a hybrid with the exact same genetics. Not a different package or different size but the exact same product and we would see it varying almost as much as 110% between states. We would even see cases within a state you would see a price variance where you would see 60% plus,? Baron says. ?I think the point of all of it is that farmers have just had a hard time evaluating are they getting good prices in the market and how competitive are the prices they are seeing.?
He says seed price discrepancies in one particular state stood out.
In particular in North Dakota, growers were paying very close to the price on per bag on average that you might be paying in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois or a state with higher yields. In North Dakota, their yields are vastly lower than what you would have in Iowa. The relative amount they are paying per acre is just higher as a share of their farm revenue.?
Baron adds that was surprising because the industry tries to accommodate lower yielding regions with lower prices. However, He says the level of offset FBN found did not match the level of yield difference.
FBN is hosting a Farmer2Farmer conference in Omaha in mid-December.
