The Corn Feed

On the heels of South by Southwest’s panel entitled “How Farmers Get Serious Business Done With Mobile”, we’re taking a look at how the expansion of social media has affected the agriculture business.

According to a recent Forbes article, farmers are using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to share everything from crop reports to weather conditions.

But what does social media have to do with the bottom line of farming?

It turns out Twitter may have the power to impact the price of corn as well, according to a recent story by CNBC.

CNBC reports that it’s not just the producers that are part of the conversation.

“A lot of time farmers are talking to other farmers and I’m sitting there listening,” says Thomas Elwood, aka @cornbroker, who trades corn and other grains on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. ‘Twitter is kind of like a big coffee house,’ he said.

To grains traders looking for any kind of edge in the markets, Twitter has become a game-changer. Whereas agricultural brokers and traders once spent hours conducting telephone surveys with farmers or embarking on so-called windshield surveys, in which they drove down Interstate 80 during harvest season to eyeball crops, they can now gather real-time updates on planting intentions and yields on Twitter.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up and see where social media can take your business.

And when you do, don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter!