Agribusiness, its channel partners & a new covenant for business

Founding Principles of the New Covenant

In building our new covenant, let me suggest a few critical

founding principles:

1. Our true customer is the grower, whichever place in the

distribution channel we hold.

2. We are committed to building customer communities

whose foundation is a civil way of doing business.

3. Value is what drives purchase decisions both at the dealer

and farm-gate levels.

4. Value-based, relevant communications serve as our pass -

port into this agribusiness community.

5. Conflicts and rivalries over who owns the grower and

grower information are destructive to serving the grower,

and are unacceptable.

6. We define value according to what our mutual end-user

customer wants.

7. Each member of the channel is committed to understanding

what the grower ,"our mutual customer" values, needs & wants.

8. Some degree of tension within the channel and between

channel partners - when focused on meeting customer

needs- provides a healthy strengthening of the channel.

9. Manufacturers identify the areas in which they can best

deliver value and the areas in which their retail partners

can best deliver value to their mutual customers. These

partners then help one another to deliver this outstanding

value proposition focused on meeting the unique needs of

each individual customer.

10. Agribusiness is committed to raising the performance of the

e n t i re channel by re-creating its infrastructure to deliver relevant

value, information, education, and support wheneve r

and where ver necessary.

With these founding principles in mind, let us now work

together to identify what this new covenant is, and, over the

next few months, paint a real-world picture of what doing

business within this new paradigm looks like.