Monday, May 14, 2001		Article

Wired farmers temper growth of e-commerce
in Europe
By Eric Onstad

AGRICULTURE revolution has gained momentum in Europe. Dutch farmers Roelf and Karin de Boer peer at the glowing Internet screen as if it has foot-and-mouth disease.

The couple had heard about the new-fangled world of e-mail and e-commerce, but failed to see its relevance to their 38 hectares (94 acres) of grains, sugar beet and vegetables in the northern Netherlands.

"I never really thought it necessary for us," Roelf says gruffly, shifting his gaze from an Internet display at an agricultural fair in Amsterdam.

After a friend clicks through a few farm Web pages, showing how De Boers could view weather maps and buy fertiliser over the Internet, Roelf grudgingly agrees he might consider getting a connection next year.

Suspicious farmers wary of venturing into virtual tractor shops and online vegetable auctions have helped temper the growth of e-commerce in Europe’s agricultural sector, which lags behind others such as travel and cars in online trade.

"The Internet is threatening for some persons. It’s new and a lot of farmers are traditional," said Petra Hermans, Web editor for ZIBB, a Dutch agricultural Web site run by Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed-Elsevier.

Slowly, though, barriers are coming down and the numbers of wired farmers are increasing.

An estimated 40 per cent of Dutch farm households are hooked up to the Internet, up from five to 10 per cent three years ago. That is in line with trends among the overall Dutch population — but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

"That doesn’t mean all those farmers use the Internet. Sometimes it’s just their kids playing games and the wives using the computer to do administrative work for the farm," Hermans said.

Within a couple of years, however, De Boers and other sceptical farmers are expected to be swept by an Internet wave that will transform the way they do business.

Turnover in food and agricultural online marketplaces in the European Union is estimated to reach only 100 million euros ($89.77 million) this year, but it is expected to surge to 16.3 billion euros by 2004 and leap to 84.4 billion the following year, according to Forrester Research.

The 2005 figure will still represent only 2 per cent of all trade in the sector, compared to 25 percent in transport and travel and nine percent in paper and office products.

Most plugged-in Dutch farmers only scan the Internet for information still wary of shopping for fertiliser or seeds.

Dairy farmer Dinant Hassink, 36, has had an Internet connection for 18 months, using it to keep up on how political developments affect his business.

On a special dairy site (www.zuivelnet.nl), farmers like Hassink can track the milk they sell after it leaves their farms, logging in with passwords to check, for example, the fat content or whether any antibiotics are showing up in the milk.

On another Web site operated by chemicals firm DSM, (www.nutrinorm.nl) farmers can fill in their soil details and get tailored advice about what kind of fertilisers to use.

Hassink, who has 150 cows on his farm in Flevoland, has not yet purchased anything over the Web.

About 200 people per day use a rudimentary Dutch fruit and vegetable e-commerce site, (www.agromarketplace.com), allowing farmers to link up with wholesalers and exporters.

Unlike some B2B (business to business) sites that offer virtual auctions run by sophisticated software, it merely lists buyers and sellers’ requirements for free.

"I used to be a vegetable wholesaler and I know the difficulties with all the different products, qualities and delivery dates. We wanted a system that was easily accessible to everyone," said co-founder Peter Daniels. —Reuters