Agrifirm presents itself more as a kind of chain director. This means that the green-and-yellow farmers' cooperative is more or less returning to the role they once fulfilled, but consciously let go in 2014 to be able to fully focus on the core activities. Now Agrifirm is looking for consumers again.
This week launched Agrifirm, together with Valleivarken, climate-neutral certified pork in the Netherlands. In a sense a revolutionary step, because this is not yet on the market. The project starts small, but in the press release Agrifirm explicitly hinted that it wanted to scale up the concept. "We are looking for collaborations in the chain and a fair revenue model for farmers and growers," is how CEO Dick Hordijk justified the step. Earlier this year, the cooperative also started a pilot with local grocery service BoerNLekker, an initiative to sell fresh farm products locally.
Retreating role
Shaping a responsible food chain is Agrifirm's mission. These words go further than the core business, which basically means producing and supplying feed, coastal fertilizer and crop protection products, or in other words being a supplier to livestock farmers and arable farmers. In 2014, under the leadership of then CEO Ton Loman, Agrifirm took a retreating role in the chain. That year, the cooperative sold a number of shares in poultry meat processor Plukon. The rest was sold in 2016, including to competitor De Heus.
The sale of the Plukon shares was in line with Agrifirm's strategy at the time, which was to focus solely on its core activities. All side activities had to be skipped. However, Agrifirm remained active in China and Brazil, among others, despite criticism from members who sometimes did not think this was necessary. The argument for this is that foreign participations positively influence the result (and therefore the dividend for members).
'stick your neck out'
Although the launch of the concept with ValleiVarken is of a different order and scale than the shared ownership of Plukon, it is nevertheless a signal that Agrifirm is moving towards consumers again. The approach here is chain cooperation, as they call it at Agrifirm itself. You could also call it a chain director, although that is a bit of an outdated concept today.
"Agrifirm dares to stick its neck out with concepts and projects, even if the revenue model is not yet completely certain," CEO Dick Hordijk said in September at the cooperative's always busy youth day. In this way, the management has sent a clear signal. to future farmers that Agrifirm's role in the future will go beyond just filling silos.