July/August 2021 - 31

Making the case for IT in potato sales
IT is the acronym
UNITED POTATO
GROWERS OF
AMERICA
Buzz Shahan
Chief Operating
Officer
for information
technology. Think
about the meaning
of these two words,
taking " information "
first. Information is a
fact about something.
For guidance,
everyone knows that
having access to
fact supersedes not
having access to fact.
Compare a
decision-making process flush with fact to
one absent fact. Consider a doctor deciding
whether to remove a patient's brain tumor
not knowing the facts of the tumor's exact
location or whether it is benign or whether it
is growing. Each area of the brain is assigned
different duties, and these areas can be
tiny. There is a big difference in risk between
removing a tumor near the optic nerve
compared to removing a tumor next to the
area that monitors fingertip sensation.
What about " technology? " Using the
same brain tumor example, before MRI and
magnification technology, surgeons depended
upon the human eye looking through a
magnifying glass attached to the surgeon's
eyeglasses to guide a metal scalpel into
the brain where the tumor site had been
estimated by clumsy and dangerous X-ray.
INDUSTRY NEWS
AG WORLD GOLF CLASSIC
RAISES $117K
The Ag World Golf Classic was held in
early June in Kennewick and Moses Lake,
Washington, respectively, and raised a
record $117,000 for Ronald McDonald
House Charities of Inland Northwest.
Event founder Warren Henninger, who
died in May 2020, had a vision to expand
the event to two locations, which came to
fruition this year.
" It was an incredible event where we
could continue to honor dad's legacy
and carry on the tradition of giving to the
House, " said Melanie Finch, Henninger's
daughter. " We are grateful for the ag
industry's generosity and the great spirit
about the day. "
Spudman * July/August 2021
31
Today, a tiny camera attached to an
instrument that looks like a flexible ice pick
follows an exactly mapped MRI course through
gray matter loops, magnified one-hundred
times on a large-screen monitor, to the tumor
site, and all this so that a laser scalpel next
to the camera can precisely excise the tumor.
Imagine the difference technology makes
here - especially if you're the patient!
Everyone in the produce business knows
how Walmart utilizes information technology
to reduce costs in transportation, distribution
and inventory management. Walmart would
not be Walmart otherwise and neither would
practically every other modern-day business
venture be as effectively profitable without
information technology.
A few years back, the Colorado Potato
Administration Committee (CPAC) collaborated
with - including funding - Faceforward
Software, a Yakima, Washington software
company to develop an IT system to assist
their packer/shippers in critically managing
their crop's value as they moved it into the
market. Since then, Faceforward's software
engineers have continued refining their
technology, improving its analytic potential,
hookup patches, and display design while
lowering user cost. Imagine a grower glancing
at his iPhone screen and learning in an instant
what a 100# market basket of regional fresh
potatoes are selling for and what the average
price/100# market basket has been since
the season began. Imagine a packer/shipper/
sales group knowing by SKU as well as by the
Weighted Average Price/100# (WAP/100#)
how their operation's sales figures compare
to those of their region's average and to other
regional averages and using that information
to protect the producer.
The financial prowess of informed
regions today - even though some of the
information comes from AMS's delayed
secondhand system - so far exceeds
regions that do not exchange market
information that the comparison is stark,
almost unimaginable.
A potato sales manager should not be
willing to operate in a market-information
vacuum. How long would one operating in
such a vacuum last at Walmart or anyplace
else where making a profit matters?
A potato producer can no more afford
an informationally blindfolded organization
selling his crop than a brain-tumor patient
can afford a blindfolded neurosurgeon.
July/August 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July/August 2021
