Plan ahead to mitigate supply challenges
American fruit growers understand that what separates the good years from the great years is often an operation’s ability to overcome adversity. A proactive protocol that is informed and strategically sound is a prerequisite to operational consistency.
Today, being prepared to overcome challenges is more important than it ever has been, particularly as it relates to accessing the products the market has come to depend on.
Situational Analysis
What:
Significant chemical product shortages, delays in receiving products, and in some cases, pricing of input products, including specific surcharges, are affecting the entire agriculture industry.
Why:
It’s a confluence of factors that have resulted in a perfect storm affecting product availability and pricing.
For instance, shipping challenges across the world have made getting imports incredibly difficult, costly and time consuming. Demand for many imports have outpaced the ability to transport goods to the U.S. from places like China and India.
Recent “trade wars” also caused numerous demand influxes increasing congestion in shipping. This intense demand has caused ocean freight costs to increase around 300% globally.
Plus, once goods are in the U.S., they’re arriving at ports that are congested, causing further backups and increased costs. To make matters more difficult, once goods are out of a port, ground transportation is another massive barrier – major shortages of truck drivers, for instance has added more cost and delays.
What can you do?
- Pick the right partners.
Chances are, some of the products you have come to rely on may be unavailable or priced in a manner that just doesn’t pencil out anymore. Choosing the right purchase partners for inputs will be paramount for the next months and (maybe even) years. Make sure your consultants, retailers and advisors are doing their homework on same-result alternatives that can be utilized in the case of shortages or pricing frustrations.
- Plan for alternatives.
When putting together your agronomic plans, it’s a good idea to tier your product choices based on availability and pricing. That way, if Plan A isn’t available, you have already analyzed the pros and cons of another option that may work just as well, and not cause you to miss your application window.
- Get the answers you deserve.
Looking for sources you can trust will give you honest, transparent updates about the barriers to supply and pricing. You’ll need to know you have all the information required to make informed, sound decisions with the barriers facing the industry.
Keeping the Atticus promise.
Atticus was built for the moments in which our customers need us most. In fact, our team of experts was selected specifically to support our mission to serve the industry reliably and transparently.
Armed with a diverse team of skilled professionals, we activate an intimate understanding of the issues at hand and work diligently to negate the effects felt by our customers.
Although the state of supply isn’t simple by any means, our commitment to strengthening every aspect of our supply chain, coupled with our relentless pursuit of results, allows us to deliver, even as dynamics become increasingly complex.
With supply uncertainty at an all time high, you can trust this: We put our experience to work so our customers can focus on growing their businesses.