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Burlington, IA | You guys must be a little cynical first thing in the morning before you have your coffee/caffeine. I don't think Burrus loses any independence here, in fact they may gain some. Let me give you a little insight. NuTech also has an alliance with Dupont/Pioneer/ProAccess, but are completely privately owned. ProAccess is just the arm of Pioneer that actually works with the regional seed companies. All Burrus is doing, like NuTech, is gaining access to Pioneer's genetics portfolio. I don't think most people have a good understanding of just how large Pioneer's genetics portfolio is. It's HUGE, so huge that there is more than enough genetic material to go around amongst the companies having access, with little or no duplication. With the exception of a few things that Pioneer keeps proprietary, everything else in their portfolio is wide open to us. The hybrids we use are hand picked by us, Dupont/Pioneer/ProAccess does NOT dictate to us what we will take. 2 of NuTech's owners, who are among a handful of the most knowledgeable corn guys in the industry, in my opinion, do the selecting. Nothing that we choose to use is available from a Pioneer rep, only from us, and are not seconds, leftovers, or floor sweepings, as some would have you believe. You can believe that there are Pioneer reps out in the country that are NOT happy that Pioneer has opened up their portfolio to outside companies. But now that Pioneer has stockholders to answer to, the key to the stockholder's happiness is profitability. It's now occurred to Pioneer that one of the ways to stay profitable, if not pick up market share, is to give a selected handful of strong regional companies access to their genetics and traits, for a price, of course. This does not take away from NuTech's independence, it adds to it, and gives the company more diversification of product line, which they are striving for anyway, and more independence from M. I'm sure the entire situation with Burrus is something similar.
Having said that, we are seeing evidence that Pioneer is starting to get their second wind where their genetics are concerned. The major windstorms that blew across much of IA last fall, that left thousands of acres of DK flat in the field, didn't have that much effect on P genetics. I have seen DK and P genetics side by side in the same field, same growing conditions, same wind, and the DK was flat, and the P genetics was still standing good, and the yield was there. By mid December '08, DK was about 1 million bags in sales behind that same time frame in '07, due in large part to that wind, and they never made that all up. I think that standability is one small bit of evidence that P is getting their second wind. Once the final sales figures are out for '09, I think they'll show that between Pioneer and ProAccess, P has picked up at least a couple points in market share.
And no, it's not a big P fan saying this. I've fought Pioneer's arrogance, and closed mindedness to anything else by potential clients wearing Pioneer underwear, for too many years, to say that I was thrilled about an alliance with Pioneer. But things change, and if we can take something from P, and make it our own, so to speak, and increase our success, and growth, because of it, and increase our independence, then so be it. I'm willing to use P as a means to an end.
You can take this for whatever you'd like, but I'm not coming from an illiterate position on this.
My .02.
JDH
Edited by JDH SE IA 8/4/2009 11:18
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Burrus Teams up with DuPont
