"Decommoditize" and look "long-term"

I'm at Crop Production Week in Saskatoon. I'm writing daily reports at www.cropproductionshownews.com, so please check it out if you haven't already.

I read over my reports from yesterday and noticed I used "long term" at least three times. You could blame me for a lack of creativity in word selection, but I think the fact I used "long term" three times shows that Canadian growers are getting much smarter about marketing. They are now looking, more than ever, at long-term sales arrangements with end-use companies or specific buying segments — U.S. horse owners, in the case of oats — or governments, in the case of pulse sales to India.

Bert Vandenberg, pulse breeder at the U of S and a top brain in the Canadian pulse industry, calls this "decommoditization." In his view, tighter sales arrangements based on particular "whole food" attributes of a pulse crop are THE way to build Canadian pulse sales.

I'd also like to note that checkoff dollars are a good way to fund these salesmanship opportunities. Saskatchewan Oat Development Commission, which has just two years of checkoff money so far, could not have organized and paid for its own market opportunities study without that investment from farmers. If, in the future, it means you can expect to sell your oat crop every year instead of sitting on it while the glut passes, it will be good return on a 50-cent-per-tonne investment.