“It’s Time to Give Farmers a Way to Save Money…
By Customizing Their Seed Treatment at a Much Lower Cost.”
Columbus, Oh., Sept. 14, 2021. Meristem Crop Performance is offering a 100-percent replant benefit to offer American farmers great peace of mind even as they save up to 50 percent on high quality seed treatment. Mitch Eviston, Meristem Founder and CEO announced the program recently at Meristem’s annual “Dealer/Partner Exchange.”
“It’s time to give farmers a way to save money at the farm gate by buying their beans naked and customizing their seed treatment for a much lower cost.” explains Eviston, “We had a great start with our pilot program and look forward to reaching many more farmers with the offer for the 2022 season.” He says it’s Meristem’s continuing effort to disrupt an agricultural supply chain that gouges farmers with hidden costs.
“Too often, when buying seed farmers face a big company bundled-up, black-box shell game where the value of germplasm, traits and seed treatment are hard to figure,” says Eviston. By creating a replant program that fits with a seed company’s untreated or “naked” soybean policy, he says, Meristem will be able bring savings to more growers who currently might be reluctant to try RACEREADY Complete, Meristem’s premium seed treatment product. “We can save farmers money, but to do that, they must order naked beans.”
Lewis Stern, agronomist with Progressive Crop Solutions, Fostoria, Ohio, says buying naked beans and getting downstream seed treatment allows farmers to solve specific challenges brought by local soils and weather. “This past year our planting conditions changed and we lacked some key seed treatment ingredients that would have helped us.”
Stern, who leads a team of seven agronomists consulting on 125,000 acres, says freshness of seed treatment is also an issue. “I can tell you that inoculant applied on seed five days ago will certainly work better than stuff put on 180 days ago.”
Benefits of seed treatments are clear, according to The American Seed Trade Association (ASTA). They report a 3.6 percent yield benefit in treated soybeans versus un-treated and university studies show adverse planting conditions often pushing that number beyond 5-bushel/acre or more. At $10/bushel, that represents an income difference of $17,000 – $50,000 across a thousand acres.
Meristem adds savings on top of those yield benefits with quality seed treatment customized for more local field conditions, at the same time making the price transparent so producers can evaluate the yield advantage and ROI on their own.
“This can be a major cost saving and farmers shouldn’t be stuck with old habits,” says Rob McClelland, Meristem President and CMO. “In the old bundled system, you are likely to spend, on average, about $40 on the seed and $18 on the seed treatment, though it may be hidden to you in the overall price,” he explains. “By buying naked beans and treating with Meristem’s RACEREADY CompleteTM, farmers can treat the same beans for $9 and gain an immediate savings of about $18,000 on 2,000 acres of soybeans.”
McClelland says this first of its kind program is part of Meristem’s continuing effort to treat farmers fairly and bring more innovative thinking to the crop input supply chain. Meristem’s replant offer is being underwritten by crop insurance specialists Vane Ag, led by crop insurance and finance veteran Don Preusser, formerly CEO of John Deere Credit.
“It’s our mission at Vane to leverage the latest technology to help manage risk in crop production,” says Preusser, Vane’s President. “We are excited to join forces with passionate partners like Meristem to apply innovative risk management solutions to help bring more value and freedom of choice to American farmers.”
“If there are 80 million acres of soybeans planted in 2022 and everyone chose to use our RACEREADY Complete seed treatment, we could save American farmers more than $700 million,” McClelland explains. “That’s a lot of money staying with local families and communities that right now may be leaving the country and going to China or Germany.”
Meristem Crop Performance Group, LLC ( www.meristemag.com) is one of the fastest-growing direct-to-farm crop input companies in America. Meristem sources, formulates and delivers high-quality crop inputs to farmers at the least cost possible, at savings up to 30 percent. By helping farmers and local independent agribusinesses make the most of their infrastructure and intellectual property investments, the company improves productivity and removes waste in the established distribution channel. Meristem is led by a world-class team of ag professionals passionate about creating the most efficient channel to move innovative practices and novel technologies to market for the benefit of the American Farmer.
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