Why Won’t They Talk to Me?!

Post by Raegan Johnson:

I felt like a five year old throwing a tantrum.

It was the first day of the 2009 Husker Harvest Days Show, and I was excited to talk to growers. I wanted to know how the show was going, what they thought of the Monsanto booth and the tour. I eagerly waited at the exit of the Yields of Tomorrow Tour with my pen and my pad anticipating all of the great responses I would be able to report back to you. But after four tours, I had nothing.

People weren’t rude, but they were in a hurry. I heard, “Oh I don’t have time to answer any questions.” “I am running to work a booth, sorry.” The first person, who actually allowed me to interview him, was hopping on a tractor tour, and I had to hop on with him just to squeeze in a few questions.

Once the interview was finished, I hopped off the tour, and actually ended up on the side of the show grounds completely opposite to Monsanto’s tent.

About 30 minutes later, I made it back to the tent and took my post, but more people kept whizzing by me. I wondered, what is going on?

Finally, a grower took me aside and shared some important information with me. She told me most people travel to Husker Harvest from hours away, and only come for one day. She said most of them are trying to cram a lot of booth-visiting, tours and demonstrations into a short period of time.

Now it was starting to make sense.

Even though Husker Harvest is smaller than farms shows like Farm Progress, farmers didn’t have time to waste with a few questions from me. They had a lot to see—from John Deere’s latest equipment to what we and competitors like Pioneer have been up to within the past year.

Feeling relieved and a little more self-confident—I wasn’t sure if I was beginning to grow a third eye—I approached another farmer who had just completed the tour, and he agreed to talk. I was surprised to find out he wasn’t even a Monsanto customer—yet.

Interesting, I thought. I was used to talking to customers who used our products—loved them or had a few complaints, but I had never interviewed someone who wasn’t a potential customer about Monsanto.

But Scott Richert, vice president of the Nebraska Soybean Association, was ready to share his perspective.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “The strides that Monsanto is making moving forward in the development of new hybrids and pushing the yields and the health of crops forward.”

He said on his farm it’s going to mean a bigger truck. “We are going to be handling more grain off every acre. I am amazed by the amount of things that are happening, how fast everything is moving and how many different irons there are in the fire in the seed industry right now.”

Richert said he doesn’t use any Monsanto products right now, but that could change.

“I am really interested in the dicamba soybeans,” he said. “They were developed in Nebraska and they are probably going to be a big item in the future, especially with some of the resistance issues we’re having with glyphosate.”

I closed the interview by asking him if after taking the tour and participating in my charming interview, Monsanto was any closer to winning him over.

“You never know,” he said with a smile. “You always wonder what that next big thing is going to be. There are just so many things going on. You just wonder who is going to get to whatever the big new thing is first. Like with the drought-tolerance. Different companies have been talking about it, but it’s not as easy as everybody first thought. [They thought] we’re just going to just jump in and find that gene and now it’s multiple genes and multiple locations.”

He said that even with the complexity of the issue, he is impressed we have been able to move forward as fast as we have.

So in regards to my question, I’ll take his answer as a strong maybe.