Grainswest - Tech 2023

Tech 2023 Grains West 38 BIN TO BANK GRAIN MANAGEMENT The founder and CEO of GrainFox, Mark Lepp said the company helps western Canadian farmers manage their crops from “the bin to the bank.” He defines this digital tool as a farm wealth solutions platform that treats commodities no differently than any other assets in a healthy investment portfolio. The company has worked with farm operators of all sizes since 2019 to help themmake informed business decisions. A GrainFox subscriber will experience customized tools and resources designed specifically for their farm. “What we’ve done is take those broad, high-level strategies—short-, medium- and long-term—and really evolve that into a kind of fintech where you put your crops in a portfolio and help you understand what the relative outlooks are of each specific product and what that means to you,” said Lepp. Farmers can choose to input as much, or as little, information as they want. This can include cash flow goals and needs, storage constraints and sales as well as contract and delivery details. A risk tolerance survey is also included to help inform the tailored strategies users receive. “You can literally sign up, put that information in and within five minutes you will have your personalized sales strategy, at least as a starting point,” he said. GrainFox recently launched its Smart Advisor tool, which provides personalized sales recommendations via machine learning and AI by combining decades of market data with a farmer’s data. “We set out to eliminate ‘newsletter fatigue,’” said Lepp. “In the process, we developed a tool that takes personalization above and beyond anything in the market.” It’s typical for a farmer to receive marketing recommendation eBlasts for each of the multiple crops they grow. This creates a glaring issue. “None of those are relative to each other,” said Lepp. “It’s telling you to hold on to your canola. It’s also telling you to hold on to your wheat for maybe less time; but each of those strategies are independent by the crop.” GrainFox can understand the status of a farmer’s crop characteristics and operational goals to generate a holistic solution for a business. Because it’s priced on a flat rate, Lepp believes his 5,000-plus customers all benefit with GrainFox. With its two primary models based on subscription rather than a per acre fee, many “smaller” farms can now get top-rate insights, he said. “We really try to make this as easy as possible to use for all types of farmers … but we have definitely seen the 80 to 90 per cent of farms under 5,000 acres are rarely serviced with a company that helps with grain marketing,” said Lepp. “That’s what we’re trying to change.” GrainFox plans to integrate with other farm data management platforms, including John Deere, so cross-compatibility is not an issue, he noted. He hopes farmers try the app and realize crops should be treated with the same diligence as retirement funds. Farmers routinely work with many trusted advisors and Lepp sees GrainFox as another means to strengthen farm management. “There’s a lot of ways farmers can create better connectivity with the people they’re doing business with,” he said. “That helps on every single component of that farm business on just improving communication and information flow so that farmer can make better decisions.” TRACEABILITY ACROSS THE SUPPLY CHAIN Not every digital marketing business wants to roll up its sleeves and get dirty. Some just want to provide the platform where the work can be hammered out. “You can literally sign up, put that information in and within five minutes you will have your personalized sales strategy, at least as a starting point.” —Mark Lepp FEATURE