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Rivers, MB | Here's the scenario that concerns me more than anything. Will use canola but really an grain has the same concern.
This year, most of western Canada and the northern states (MT, ND, SD) were very dry. Big concerns about low yields. As the combines started rolling, we realized that yields were better than expected. Turned out a lot of western Canada had a great crop. Believe canola was all time record production. Any company that is collecting yield data in real time has an edge over anyone else in the market. Farmer's Edge has CAN plugs in every piece of equipment including combines. So they have yield info, and info across western Canada, before anyone else. And its aggregated so they have a better feel what real production is than any one farmer. What prevents them from taking a position in the canola market with the "insider" info.
Then, if they sell that data back to farmers so we can benchmark our production, compare varities etc, only their customers have that info. And take it a step further, what prevents any grain company or trader from buying a little 600 ac farm in Saskatchewan or Manitoba for a measly million $'s and signing up to Farmer's Edge benchmark data that is coming off the field in real time. The interest on that $1million farm purchase is very cheap market intelligence for all of Western Canada.
I agree that farm data is geographic specific. Thing is, if they set up their database well, no reason they can't separate out data that is relevant for your farm. I actually see value to farms to be able to do the benchmarking. Its the macro data from crop size that is my big concern. How many thousands of posts have happened on Market talk alone arguing about whether the corn crop was bigger or smaller than trend? | |
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Farmer's Edge EULA 01NOV2017
