THE BUYING GAME
Written by Chris Fellows Last month I got chatting to a driver delivering chemicals to the price. But you also might have over-ordered and left with stock farm, and he got around to asking what I was doing that day. I that could deteriorate. The buying risk is moving to the farmer, was in fact working on a new service we are developing called so the price paid should reflect that. Farm Compare, which is designed to help farmers buy more For instance â most of us will use something like a Liberator. efficiently. I wasnât sure how well this would go down, but his Did you know there have been 29 different products produced response was interesting. using the same chemistry in the last 18 months? Thatâs right, âGreatâ he said. âMy next five deliveries are single drums of chemical to each farm. Maybe youâll teach them to buy in more sensible quantitiesâ.
29 equivalents for just one product. And the price difference on all of them are different. Here are just a few of them:
Farm deliveries are peculiarly wasteful. The delivery driver understands that dropping off a single drum is far from efficient; and the average housewife knows that buying a four pack of baked beans is more cost effective than buying singles as well. But despite this knowledge this driver was going to drive 45 minutes to get to the five different farms. That is not efficient, and the cost of that inefficiency is being paid for by farmers. In one way or another.
What is the issue?
The fault here doesnât totally lie with farmers who like to get the goods they need when they need them. They donât know that they are paying a premium price for getting single drums, because they donât know the quantity discount. And the distributors pride themselves in their ability to deliver products as an when needed, one at a time if required. The scenario gets worse as the farmer only orders exactly what he needs for any job. In industry it is âJust-In-Time Procurementâ. The supplier holds the stock and delivers little and often. It can be efficient for the farmer but is massively inefficient for the distributor. If so, why should the farmer be interested in making a change to this supply system? The reason is that every supplier has to load the distribution costs on to the price of the product. Everyone is a loser.
Enter Farm Compare
Here is a free price comparison and product lookup tool for farmers for crop protection products. Itâs a simple idea which depends on the involvement of lots of farmers. If you contribute the prices which you have had to pay for product, you can then see the prices others have paid. It also shows the quantities in each order, revealing the quantity discount. There is no cost to use it.
To see a price range is normal. You would expect there to be a difference between buying 1 pack and 50 packs. As the prices quoted also often include delivery, you might also expect a differential by location. For that reason, we have included filters for location. The above data is national, but you can also run a search for your region. This table is for the East Midlands:
The aim of Farm Compare is for you to see not just the price, but how was that price achieved. what quantities are ordered generally. Where was the delivery location? Remote or central? How many packs were ordered to achieve it? When was it? In high season to be used immediately or off-season? Was the product R&D, a generic or a parallel. There are lots of questions and Farm Compare gives you the answers. You can even compare prices from one equivalent product to another. Thatâs not to say they are exactly the same, just that they include the same chemistry. Knowing this information helps you buy better. Buying all your requirements product once and early in the year (by guessing your need) could have been the way to get the best
DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
Obviously, the more filters you apply, the fewer number of overall prices there will be to compare with, but the more relevant those prices will be for you. By the way, everything
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