Mike Neaverson: Ask for crop data during sales pitches

As both an agronomist and farmer, I am often accosted at this peak time of year by the manufacturers and distributors of various laxly regulated “alternative” products, trying to sell their wares for application to different crops.

You know the type of thing – usually a plant extract of some kind, or a biostimulant and micronutrient soup. 

Often the benefits are claimed to be a yield increase of perhaps a few single-digit percentage points. 

See also: Mike Neaverson – collaboration is key to growing OSR

About the author

Mike Neaverson

News opinion writer

Mike Neaverson is a potato grower and independent agronomist from South Lincolnshire. After a spell in farm management, he set up his own business in 2017 and is also heavily involved with his family’s 300ha arable farm.

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These products are not usually of insignificant cost, and are often peddled with the kind of vigour and tenacity that befits a person on a substantial sales-related commission.

Look at field trial results

For clarity, I’ve no doubt that some of these products do have merit, and I’m sure in certain situations provide a margin far in excess of their cost. But I suspect a lot of them don’t, and you can soon weed them out by asking for one simple thing: good data. 

Commissioning replicated field trials is not a particularly expensive operation in the context of increasing product sales. If all you wanted to prove is that your product increases yield by X amount, you could ask one of the independent triallists to do this for little more than the cost of a 10-year-old hatchback. 

So, in my opinion, if one of these products has been on the market for a number of seasons and the distributor isn’t able to provide a small portfolio of independent trial results, there’s two likely scenarios.

Either the manufacturers have actually trialled the product and proved it not to work, which in itself is not a great sales pitch. Or they’ve not had the confidence in their own product to even trial it to begin with. 

I’ve often wondered what would happen if I applied all of these products in one go. My logical extension is that the small yield increases from each would be compounded; my wheat would have the bushel weight of sand, the protein level of steak, and the gross margin of a North Sea oil rig.

Perhaps I should give it a go.