What does being ready for the future look like on your farm?
Friday morning on the Main Stage at Farmer2Farmer IV featured announcements and updates on seed, crop marketing and insurance from FBN experts and leaders—all centered around how you can take back control of your farm’s future. Here’s what you missed...
How? First off, we busted several major myths in seed, explaining how data transparency is helping to make the accessible and visible to farmers:
MYTH: Seed companies must tell the truth in their advertising. FACT: You need the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—not the omitted truth. For example, seed brand ads often highlight yield advantages over another brand’s varieties based on the company’s own field trial results; however, anonymous and aggregated data from FBN—built on more than 4,500 varieties and 60 million acres of harvest data—shows how these hybrids have actually performed on real-world acres across the FBN network.
MYTH: Multinationals have all of the good genetics tied up. FACT: Genetics are a tangled web and FBN can accelerate development through the F2F Genetics NetworkTM.
MYTH: Seed companies will never be able to keep up as the multinationals invest in innovation. FACT: Startups are driving the innovation.
MYTH: Traits guarantee farmer profits. FACT: Genetics drive yield increase. Traits protect yield.
MYTH: Generic traits will never happen. FACT: Generic traits in top performing new genetics have already been launched with more to come.
MYTH: Seed companies are following the FBN lead and becoming more transparent. FACT: Unfortunately, the problem runs deeper than what has been exposed.
The future of seed will be centered around:
Yields without compromise
Full transparency
Fair and flat pricing
Some of the economic pressures you’re facing are predictable
Devin Lammers, FBN head of Crop Marketing, shared thoughts on the continuing variability in costs and farm income—principally driven by crop marketing, weather and the trade wars. You need a comprehensive strategy for risk management that takes into account crop marketing.
How can you take back control in your crop marketing?
Better access to information is benefiting farmers, but information alone is not enough. Advanced statistical efforts are extracting better insights that you can actually use to make more informed crop marketing decisions.
Technology is improving overall marketing effectiveness and can help you to streamline execution.
Through new and emerging markets that are developing and offering premiums, you can access non-commodity marketing opportunities, get closer to premium end users and consumers, and unlock value for quality, traceability and other unique attributes.
Simplifying the unnecessarily complex helps to reduce your risk
Where insurance and risk management are concerned, Lucas Strom, FBN head of Insurance shared that more than 10 percent of farms have no health coverage. While annual premiums can be upwards of $40,000 per year, average net farm income is down to $77,000 last year. As it exists today, the healthcare system is complex, employer-driven and a political ragdoll, but the future of health for farmers should offer farm-focused plans that offer reduced premiums, shared savings, stay-healthy incentives, better access and education.
What does the future look like for crop insurance?
What has historically been a complicated process and confusing offering with tedious manual reporting, no online or digital experience and little data to drive decisions, is becoming smart, personalized and simple with a new connected experience, a team of expert agents and the power of the FBN network.
Taking back control means being prepared for whatever comes next. Don’t worry about the future—be ready for it.