Agroy, an Amazon system for agriculture ...
With the new technological and communications platforms, all or almost all of the world's retail systems can interact online with respect to the prices, products or supplies they need and what the market offers them. That immediacy and online connectivity is not observed in the agricultural world.
The co-founder of Agroy, Brad McDonald, who is also an agricultural producer in the northeast of Iowa, assures that the technology is perfectly prepared to carry out this dream and in the immediate future, agricultural producers will be able to count on this type of purchasing services and online sale, Amazon type.
Agroy is an emerging company that uses the technology implemented to provide these services to farmers and their goal is to reduce the overall costs of inputs to save money for their customers, and they do so through an online platform that allows farmers buy products in bulk, with other farmers around the world.
In this exclusive system for farmers, you can buy seeds, fertilizers and chemicals from anywhere in the world to obtain the best available rate.
When Agroy has a product available to sell, mainly seeds, fertilizers or chemical products, farmers in that region will receive an email with information about the product and the price. "Farmers can take that information and use it when they negotiate purchases. Or they can buy the product through us"Explains McDonald.
For its part, Agroy takes advantage of the scale of the farmers who have signed up to negotiate a better price for the farmer. "The goal is to save farmers money"Says McDonald. For example, Agroy was able to offer farmers a saving of USD35 per tonne in dry fertilizer.
Agroy's network includes hundreds of farmers, who can register for free at Agroyinc.com, and spans millions of acres from California to the Midwest to Texas to Canada, although the initial goal was to offer products only to farmers in the US. The future growth of the company and the possibility of selling more products in more regions depends on adding additional hectares, more producers and more suppliers.
Agroy encourages farmers to join and offers incentives to large-scale farmers to help the network grow rapidly. Farmers who have the ability to store fertilizers or other additional products can be paid to store these items. "We buy the product, we pay the farmer for the storage and the product we sell is still cheaper than what a farmer could buy elsewhere"Explains McDonald.
The company works directly with distributors and seed companies, negotiating the tariff of the products that will be offered to the Agroy network and establishing the limit for the place where the product can be delivered. While farmers today can not buy all the major brands of seeds and chemicals, Agroy is working to add more suppliers.
Agroy started in Finland. "They had phenomenal success, and 8% of all farmland are now ordering online at wholesale prices through Agroy"Says McDonald. "If we could replicate that and get the 8% of US farmland would be a massive success".
McDonald was named by Forbes as one of his 30 junior visionaries of 30 years at 2018. "I think this is more of an honor for agriculture than for me, nobody pays attention to agriculture, even though we are doing very special things", He says, and adds with pride that"for a company like Forbes to recognize something interesting in agriculture was the coolest part".
Source: Martín Carrillo O. - Blueberries Consulting
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