Chat-room route to futures market?
17 October 2001
Chat-room route to futures market?
By Tom Allen-Stevens
GROWERS could soon have influence over grain futures at their fingertips, claims the editor of one of the worlds largest agricultural websites.
John Walter, editor of US site Agriculture On-line, wants farmers to log on and pool their data to give themselves a strategic marketing advantage.
“Futures can be influenced by sketchy information on a daily basis. But imagine the impact if farmers knew the area of corn planted before traders.”
The website, created by Successful Farming, the largest paid-circulation magazine in the USA, attracts more than 200,000 different users per month.
Two-thirds of the users on the site, amounting to over three million page-downloads each month, seek out its interactive elements, said Mr Walter.
“Top Talk is our number-two most-accessed page. The most exciting thing about Internet technology is farmers helping farmers,” he added.
Mr Walter said his ideas included the setting up of a co-operative data-sharing pool to give farmers real-time updates on crops planted.
But UK grain trader Robert Kerr from Glencore is not so sure that the Internet has so much influence. “The theory is indisputable,” he said.
“But it takes years to build up a reputation as a reliable source of information, and some information you find in chat rooms can be parochial and unreliable.”
Mr Kerr also points out that British farmers are less isolated, although there is some evidence that chat-room technology is catching on in the UK.
Earlier this month saw the first agricultural technical chat hosted by nomoreslugs.com, the website of slug pellet manufacturer De Sangosse.
Just 12 people took part in the hour-long event. Technical hitches locked many potential slugchatters out of the site, said De Sangosses Eric Gussin.
Meanwhile, more than 2000 farmers voted and submitted comments in a recent petition for an inquiry into foot-and-mouth, hosted on FWi.
Over 70% of applications for a competition for tickets to the Agritechnica show, run concurrently in Crops magazine and FWi, were also submitted on line.
“After these and other successes, more emphasis will be placed on interactive elements in future,” said FWi electronic publisher Julian Westaway.
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