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| Best of NAMA 2025 |
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PURDUE RESEARCH SHOWS WHICH TASKS FARMERS WANT HELP
May 31, 2024
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| Downey |
by Dr. Scott Downey, Director and Professor, Purdue University; Masie Keshavarz, Research Project Manager, Purdue University
Agribusiness professionals offer a lot of value-added services and information to producers. Sometimes, I think suppliers are even taken for granted or don't receive the revenue or margins they earn through these activities. As someone who spends a lot of time with agribusiness sales professionals, I've given some thought as to why this is and have realized there's another possibility. Maybe the areas producers feel they need help aren't the ones suppliers are addressing.
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| Keshavarz |
In August of 2023, we asked farmers where they wanted help on their farms--and where they didn't--on several different topics. I want to share what they said in this post.
Figure 1 shows the rating results by farm type. It is interesting that responses from both crop and livestock producers are similar. Among the tasks listed, "Marketing and Trading" received the highest rating for seeking help, followed by "Information Gathering."
Conversely, "Purchase, Delivery, and Storage" was rated the lowest. However, for crop producers, both "Marketing and Trading" and "Information Gathering" were nearly equal, with ratings of 5.21 and 5.20 out of 9, respectively.
Taking a deeper dive into the results, Figures 2 and 3 compare the rating of tasks by different farm sizes for crop and livestock farms, respectively.
The farm size categories are based on gross revenue according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture: Farm Typology:
*Large: Gross revenue more than $5 million
*Commercial: Gross revenue between $1 million and $5 million
*Mid-size: Gross revenue between $150,000 and $1 million
The ratings for production and planning tasks vary across different farm sizes. For example, large crop farms rated "Marketing and Trading" as the task they most seek help with, whereas commercial and mid-size crop farms rated "Information Gathering" highest. The task that large crop farms least seek help with is "Strategy and Planning for Production," while mid-size crop farms least seek help with "Production Management" (Figure 2).
To read the entire article click here.
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