Give yourself a pat on the back. If you are reading this you are part of a fairly elite group. Not because of the pearls of wisdom that I scatter here, although I wouldn’t mind if that was the reason. No, you are elite because up to half of your peer group hasn’t embraced the internet yet.
I find that hard to believe but that’s what a recent study commissioned by the National Association of Farm Broadcasting says.
These are US numbers so they aren’t necessary exactly accurate for Canada but they probably aren’t too much different. The number that leaps out at me is that roughly 1/3 of farmers with gross sales greater than $500,000 don’t personally access the internet. Several years ago now I sat on the board of directors of the Canadian Association of Ag Retailers. One of our board members runs a very large Canadian fertilizer company – we’re talking fertilizer manufacturer here, not a retailer – let’s call him George. We had a big debate about the use of email to send information out to board members. George stunned us all when he said that he didn’t see what the big deal was about using email versus using the fax machine. “When an email comes in my girl has to print it off. When a fax comes in it’s already printed. So the fax is actually faster and easier to use.”
I’m relieved to see that farmers haven’t figured out why to use Twitter either. I tried to figure it out and concluded that it was a colossal time waster with no visible benefit. Apparently I’m not alone in that conclusion.
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