Getting the time of day from a seed salesman

agman

Member
I need to buy 30 bags of seed corn and 100 bags of bean seed and can't get the time of day from sales guys, emails and calls hardly work, and if you don't want the numbers they try to sell you it is over, I know my order is a pittance compared to most, but seems they could use it to get some of their bigger guys boosted up to a higher level discount. I farm some white timber soil and muck and the racehorse numbers they want me to buy just never work on my soils.
 
Some places are better than others around here. Definitely a few want the large accounts only. Maybe somebody here knows a good online source. I know this is somewhat unrelated but I hear some BTO accounts are being held up for 2013 till the subsidized crop insurance program is known to be in the next farm bill. I know some guys in the area here operate on razor-thin per acre profits. I don't know that they could bear an extra 50 to 100 dollar per acre expense most years (2.50-3.00 corn and 5.50-6.00 dollar beans). High margin operators can often "self insure" and more times than not pull operating money from cash but I don't know what the big ag bankers are thinking on guys borrowing into six or seven figures. Probably going to want some hefty collateral if the insurance does not pencil out.
 
I'll tell you the experience I just had. Fielders Choice went out of business. The salesman I'd dealt with sent me a package from Specialty Seeds over the summer. I'd tried to contact him several times. He FINALLY called me last week. Prices were OUTRAGEOUS.$330 a bag. All had was seed corn for the contunuous corn/soybean guys,Smartstax corn borer,rootworm,western bean cutworm,ear worm,Poncho,Votivo etc etc etc.
There's an old order Mennonite over east of town selling Masters Choice. I went over there Friday and talked to him in person. He had to check,but he called me back this afternoon. He wasn't cheap,but he could get it. $175 a bag for the little bit of conventional that I can use,$228 for straight Roundup Ready,no Bt.Two different varieties,one that he said was a good corn for picking ear corn,the other for silage. I told him to go ahead and get it,but I'm not happy with the price. At least I found somebody who cared enough to make the effort to find what I wanted.
 
Heck,my local john deere dealer tells me that if you don't farm a 1000 acres they don't even want to talk to you.
 
I would find a different seedman.Seems there lots of
seed guys out there.Find a dealer who handles a
smaller local seed producer.I had that problem with
a Pioneer dealer.In fact,I was engaged to marry the
daughter of one of his bigger costomers(am really
glad she did'nt pan out)So...I found a DeKalb/Trojan
guy that was thrilled to take care of me.Still Does.
 
I buy about the same, and have had pretty good luck here in Pa. I've been pretty loyal to a local guy because he gives good service. But I get a few other guys calling and stopping by.
Josh
 
Try unity seed co. I have dealt with them for several years they don't care how big you order is and they will deliver it to your door.
 
My seed supplier came to our farm this morning and downloaded the data from our yield monitor. Then he took me to lunch. We will use 50 units of corn and just over 200 units of soybeans for next year's crop.
 
No, I did not see it till you pointed it out. I know from talking to guys in years gone by that the banks often required certain customers who lacked in collateral relative to the operating loan to take out crop insurance even if it was the catastrophic 50% 500 dollar premium per crop unlimited acres. I am thinking once commodity prices recede from their historical highs that certain farmers will not be able to budget a huge increase in operating expense. Nobody knows for sure what will happen but there are guesses that unsubsidized costs for something on the order of 70 percent coverage may run in the neighborhood of 80 to 100 dollars an acre or more. I know JD Seller was on his bank's loan committee so I don't know if he or somebody else can comment.
 
(quoted from post at 19:19:39 12/10/12) Heck,my local john deere dealer tells me that if you don't farm a 1000 acres they don't even want to talk to you.

This would not surprise me in the least.
 
I had a slightly different situation--been with a national seed, fertilizer company and the same salesman for 15 years. He got so comfortable he would sell what he wanted and put on what he wanted and I finally had enough walked in and told him he could not be my salesman and I was on my way to tell his boss. Course the boss knew before I got there. I told him what was going on and he could assign another salesman or I could go to the competition--they got interested and assigned a new guy. Went over what I expected with him and it was the last chance. We'll see how that works out.
 
give us a location; i'd bet someone can help. i'm a small operator and have seed guys beating my door down! plus the local coop sells seed.
 
I read this with stunned dibelief. We have at least 6 diffrent seed salesmen that would be only to happy to sell me the 25-30 bags that I need each year. I have been buying Pick Seed for the last 6 years, as it just seems towork best for our land. Used to use Pionner or Northrup King. But we can get Mycogen, Masix, Horisen,Deedel, Pride ect. But there are no bargins, My RR silage corn for next year is $268.00. some of are local BTO lads are seed dealers , won't buy from them. They use seed sales to try to get into farms, find out if they are ready to retire, sell out or rent their land,just sniffing around , if you know what I mean.
 
not much differen't around here, used to be that the dealer came to the farm and asked for your order, now most dealers are agronomy centers that are doing you a favor selling you their seed, and you have to go see them, I wouldn't pass up your order for a minute if I were your dealer, I have a dealer that sells Mustang, I liked their 194 soybeans and told him several times I would order some more, at planting time I had to go to another dealer to get some, what service. Farming has changed and not for the better.
 
I have bought my seed for the last 10 years or so from Bates Equipment here in Branch County. Great bunch to deal with, usually has what I want and I only buy 20-30 bags a year. No problems on my end.
 
From what I've been told recently... if you want corn at all next year you best get it NOW. Next spring it won't be available. So you may simply be looking at a case of taking what is available rather than what you want...

Rod
 
I don't farm full-time since '01, rent out a few hundred acres, farm some cash crop. When I had dairy, I'd buy about 100 acres worth of 'blends' for silage....last year's re-packaged seed. Very big discount. Is that no longer available? Whatever I didn't chop for silage, I combined, into the Harvestore grain unit, for the cows/steers/hogs. Blends for this area were 90-95-100 day (always 3) top line varieties from the year before. Might even have dried some...never found an issue setting the dryer. And yeah, I can agree with your comment about BTO wanting to get a foot in the door, but so do the small and middle guys who want to grow. Simply human greed.
 
If you're in or near Western NY state I can turn you on to a guy who will treat you like a king whether you buy one bag or a truckload.

The amount of seed my folks order makes you look like the BTO, but this guy took them out for a fancy expensive lunch as a thank-you for their business.
 
No,you don't seem to be able to get the discontinued avrieties anymore for some reason. We always used to plant Stanton Brand from Stanton Seed Company. It was just year old rebagged Asgrow. Then I went to getting discontinued varieties from DeKalb at a good discount,but they stopped doing that.
 
Soooooo, we know not everything gets sold each year- then they're just rebagging, maybe mixing with some new, and selling at the higher price.
 
(quoted from post at 20:38:02 12/11/12) Soooooo, we know not everything gets sold each year- then they're just rebagging, maybe mixing with some new, and selling at the higher price.
Not really. If it doesn't get sold it goes away.
Place I used to work at had a huge corn burner to heat the plant. Brought in old seed by the semi load, corn and canola.
The building had over 9 acres under roof and the corn burner was the main source of heat.
 
Not really,a lot of the returned seed is put in cold storage and retested and sold the next year.We have gotten some 2 and 3 year old seed before(major brands good numbers).
 
Well you did not say where you are located but around me, here in North-East Iowa, that size of order would not be problem getting filled.

The only thing I can think of is the fact your statement: "I farm some white timber soil and muck and the racehorse numbers they want me to buy just never work on my soils." Might cause some of the salesman to think you just want real cheap seed corn. Don't have any other idea for the bad service.

Here locally I get pestered to death by guys trying to sell me seed. I do know you are starting out way late to real have a good choice of seed this year. I had all of mine ordered by Sept 1 this year. Even then some of the numbers I wanted where already sold out. Seed supplies are going to be short this year so your choices will be more limited than normal.
 

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