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southern MN | Didnt read the other replies.
Seems someone somewhere struck a nerve with seed corn sales net.
I'll take a swing at it, sounds like you are looking for real thoughts on it.....
First, you need to read here and other sites during harvest - Deere am
No parts personnel and dealerships get more than their fair share of grief too for their designs, policies, and mistakes.
Spring time is 'your' time, but the iron folk get their ranting in their season for sure!
Now, when a person orders a 2014 tractor or planter, they kinda expect a new off the line planter or tractor to come that is set up right and works.
When we order seed corn in early fall of 2013, we kinda expect to get what we ordered, good viable seed in the size and quantity and type we paid for, to show up before we get in the field. While I understand Mother Nature can mess that up, it really isn't my problem - you promised me, and took my hard earned money.... I don't want to hear the problems, I want what I ordered. Your big company you,work for makes choices. One of those is how much seed stock to plant, to fill the orders it sells. One of their games is to send you out earlier and earlier to lock in sales, and then not plant enough of this or that stock, and so it becomes a bait and switch operation.
That is what we have. Sometimes its just Mother Nature really messed up seed growing, and I know the dealers scramble to make things work as good as they can. But - when you take the money earlier and earlier, and the bill is higher and higher and higher, then you get to deal with more and more grief when things don't work out for me the customer.
That is, frankly, pretty much just standard business. We both play the game, we both have our parts to play. You want $120 an acre from me for the seed, that's a pretty steep, you NEED to deliver....
I don't care what vehicle you drive. A beat up Taurus is fine with me. Would maybe be preferred, but makes no matter. The seed company I buy from, they have a little bit older machinery, they are nice folk.
This paragraph is gonna get you in trouble:
>>Most arguments are, "4 years ago I paid $180 a bag for corn that yielded the same. Now they think they can just blend it together and charge me $200 bucks more for it!" In the mean time there are MILLIONS spent on getting regulatory approvals here with our beloved EPA and WORLD WIDE so that we don't give China or the EU any reason to reject our exports, i.e. Starlink, MIR 162. You know, because having hump-teen dozen lawyers and pencil pushers comes free...... Its no different than a new tractor cost twice what it did ten years ago because of.........EMISSIONS!!!! Bingo folks, regulatory approvals.<<
Read your words carefully, you summed up exactly why folks are starting to not like their big seed companies, and by extension their dealers..... Can we say, shooting yourself in the foot? :)
You hit on the problems exactly. A tractor the emissions junk is mandated. Your corn seed, the company is spending millions to change it so it needs more regulations, it causes problems in other markets messing up my sales, and you are charging me more for the privlage of getting seed that isn't yielding more than it did 4 years ago.... All of that the company chooses to do, its not a mandate.
The iron companies, if they want to sell a tractor they have to do the regulations.
The seed companies, they are spending millions a day they brag, only to offer the same old same old I was getting 4 years ago...... Think about it.
Is any of this the dealers fault? No, but you are the interface with the company, for better or worse.
And, really, you need to visit with some parts people, they will assure you that they get it in spades too, its certainly not just you seed dealers. ;)
So, you asked. This is my perspective on it. I know most of you dealers bend over backwards to get some stuff worked out. I know you get some strange customers. I know you get caught between the big company and the customer.
But my pet peeve:
I'm just gonna scream if I hear one more time, how the big seed company spends millions of dollars a day because they care so much about me..... That my friend is fingernails on a chalkboard, it is a middle finger extended to your customer.... What an insult that line is. Have you ever considered what that really is saying?
Paul | |
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Seed salesmen rant
