Crop Protection Company Sharing In Farmer Risk

Managing risk is of utmost importance to farmers, but would they like their input suppliers to partner with them in mitigating risk? One company conducted a survey in which the majority of farmers answered yes, and BASF is doing something about that. Neil Bentley is the Marketing Director for BASF’s U.S. Crop business.

“Almost 60 percent of growers were looking at crop protection chemical companies as someone who should be helping to manage risk,” he said. “Farmers deal with risk each and every day. It’s something that’s been there for years, but we really see risk as a continued important element for us to focus on, especially as we look at the tight margins that farmers are faced with this year. That’s why we’ve come to the marketplace with what we call our Grow Smart Advantages that also include risk management tools for farmers.”

Bentley tells HAT there are two key areas of risk in the tools the company is bringing to farmers this year. One is risk due to unforeseen commodity price movement.

“And that’s what we call investment advantage. It’s a way of us giving a potential rebate back to growers if we see commodity price declines throughout the growing season. We also have risk advantage which is more of a weather based risk management tool, and what that means is if we see unforeseen weather issues that affect the grower’s crop conditions in the county that they live in, then there is a potential rebate that BASF will pay back against the inputs that they’ve purchased from us. So I think it’s a really fantastic opportunity for us to help share risk.”

He recommends growers meet with an innovation specialist from BASF to build a year-long plan and then learn more about enrolling in risk management options.