App could save farmers money

Thursday, March 21, 2013

by BETTEF FARMING STAFF

A new app called AgBids could save farmers money at grain-selling and fertilizer-buying time.

Developed by Guelph-based AgNition for Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO), AgBids  complements another GFO app, SellSmart.

Explaining how it works, Erin Fletcher, manager of publications and communications for GFO, says, “you can use SellSmart to see what the price is near you. When you’re ready to sell, then you connect to AgBids which allows you to send an email with sales information simultaneously to the buyers you’re interested in working with.” When you’re ready to buy fertilizer, you can also use the app to contact a number of dealers for the best price.

Peter Gredig, one of the principals in AgNition, says he has found grain buyers tend to be close on price but fertilizer sellers sometimes offer significant spreads on products such as potash.

“Even if you use AgBids once a year when you buy your potash,” Gredig says, “there could be significant difference in the per-ton cost of the fertilizer from one dealer to the next, largely because of when they secured their inventory.”

There are two things standing in the way of AgBids’ effectiveness at the moment. The app only loads on BlackBerry devices with operating systems five through seven. The app for the newest BlackBerry, operating system 10, is built and being tested. It should be available by April. Android and iPhone devices should be able to take the app by the summer, Gredig says. SmartSell downloads on all platforms.

The second obstacle for AgBids is that not every grain buyer and fertilizer seller is listed. Gredig wants that to change.

“We’ve had really good response from the grain trade,” he says, “but there isn’t a very good database for the grain-buying sector from top to bottom.” If you’re not listed in the app, you can change that by going to www.agbids.com. The AgBids download is also available on the site.

GFO has also created a gateway app called FarmCentral. When you download FarmCentral from BlackBerry’s App World, it becomes the folder for all available GFO apps. “It’s just a way of accessing a whole bunch of apps from one central location,” Fletcher says. BF