No one who regularly follows the agricultural marketplace can be anything but amazed at how rapidly things have changed. In the space of 12 or so months, market conditions have quickly gone from “great” to “not so great,” say observers. Today, there are plenty of challenges facing every company that earns a living from the crop marketplace.
A small example of this adversity was on display at the recent Mid America CropLife Association (MACA) meeting, held in early September in Chicago, IL. As a part of the three-day program, representatives from three of the nation’s largest ag distributors – Crop Production Services, Inc. (CPS), Helena Chemical Co., and United Suppliers – took part in a roundtable discussion focusing on the many challenges today’s ag retailers and grower-customers are dealing with. According to Tom Warner, president, North America Retail Agrium & CPS, this has been particularly hard for companies in agriculture to manage because of how relatively easy catering to the market has been up until now.