Grainswest - Tech 2023

Tech 2023 Grains West 36 FEATURE TECHNOLOGY CONTINUES TO upend agriculture. More and more tasks in a farmer’s daily routine can be carried out using recently developed technology. From input programs and crop scouting to safety logs and inventory management, farmers typically opt for convenience. Grain marketing is no different. Grain marketing used to be an arcane process shrouded in mystery. As new players have jumped into the game, this spookiness has begun to dissolve, and this world has simply never moved so quickly. Perhaps this relatively sudden revitalization was to be expected. Until western Canadian farmers had marketing freedom, there was virtually zero impetus to innovate and create robust marketing mechanisms. After a decade of farmers navigating grain marketing on the Prairies, many players have emerged, all with the same idea in mind: make the system work better. It’s certainly what Jon Driedger has observed. The vice-president of LeftField Commodity Research has spent 20-plus years in the grain marketing industry in Western Canada. He said the Prairies are a unique region and need to be treated as such, especially when it comes to marketing. “I would argue that price transparency and the availability of accessing prices on a widespread basis is more difficult and more opaque in Western Canada than it would typically be, for example, in the U.S,” he said. Despite companies that push grain marketing innovation with their products, these represent a “tiny fraction” of all grain transaction, said Driedger. “Perhaps at a certain point there will be a higher portion of it that does flow through these platforms, but the whole thing is a little more evolutionary than revolutionary,” he said. “It probably is also a reminder that it is kind of a relationship-and-people industry. Sometimes it’s easy to forget people want to pick up a phone and actually talk to someone or have a rep that comes by their farm.” D I GI TAL DOMAIN NON-TRADITIONAL GRAIN MARKETING GAINS MOMENTUM BY TREVOR BACQUE I ILLUSTRATION BY DOMINIC BUGATTO