March 1997
Farmers might profit from information given away
By Tom Young
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Prairie Grains is the
official publication of
the Minnesota
Association of
Wheat Growers,
North Dakota Grain
Growers Association,
South Dakota Wheat,
Inc., and the
Minnesota Barley
Growers Association.
The fee is not going to put us out of business. And, there is no fee on 10-minute delayed quotes. But it is hard to swallow paying for something that has been free for all of these years, especially when the CBOT clamors about risk management, and is one of the few games in town involving the futures market.
My point takes an ironic twist with a call I received one evening from the National Ag Statistics Service (NASS). The friendly voice on the other end of the line was requesting information about everything from my planted acres to my inventory of grain on hand. I wanted to ask for someone’s credit card number! The statistics that NASS collects from farmers are used to formulate USDA reports, which are instrumental to grain trading.
Don’t get me wrong; I use the information NASS compiles just as much as the big boys do. I’m not advocating growers to not participate in NASS surveys. However, has the time come to look at charging for our "proprietary information" just as the CBOT is?
What if farmers had their own Ag Statistics Service? What if we worked together to collect and control information on the crops we grow? An Information Pool could become a small profit center for producers and could lead to marketing of other proprietary information that is highly sought by others, such as what brand of farm inputs growers use during the growing season, or what equipment growers plan to purchase before the next growing season. Maybe we could even manage quotes from our own price discovery system.
"Tom, your ideas are outlandish," some may sniff. More outlandish, I will argue, is the fact that farmers freely divulge information about their operations that many commercial entities out there would pay dearly for.
I’m merely throwing out an idea here where producers might be able to profit by association. Do you have other ideas? Give your wheat leaders a call. All ideas for better farm profitability are needed in this time of agricultural transition, and working together, what is only a concept today could very well be a reality tomorrow.n
Tom Young, Onida, SD
President, S.D. Wheat Inc.