MORRIS, Man. – Farmers are wasting time and losing patience with the internet because they can’t find what they’re looking for, says an agricultural computer consultant.
They’re tired of searching for hogs and finding Harley Davidsons, weary of queries that turn up a million weather sites.
“The problem on the internet is you can’t find anything,” said Glen Munford. So he developed a service to help farmers get what they want off the internet. AgFind.com is a search engine that will unearth only agricultural websites from a growing database of about 5,000.
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The database contains sites developed by Munford’s company, recommended by farmers, or sent in with an on-line form at the AgFind site. The search engine’s internet address is www.agfind.com.
Not specific enough
Commonly used search engines, such as AltaVista or Yahoo, are too big and broad for what farmers need, Munford said.
Using AltaVista to search for cattle turns up more than 100,000 hits. AgFind locates 162 cattle websites, all relevant to farmers.
Munford said sophisticated internet users could theoretically find the same sites if they knew the right key words to plug into the mainstream search engines.
But AgFind eliminates those steps.
“We’re computer people, but we all got our cowboy boots on and we all have our ball caps, and we know farm equipment,” Munford said.
He honed his idea for a search engine by flying it past the 147,000 people on his e-mail list, along with the farmers he has coffee with, and the ones he meets at seminars he gives across Western Canada.
He said farmers are looking for three things on the internet: market information, weather and very specific products.
“The fourth one is to plan their trip to Mexico,” he joked.
AgFind is the culmination of a year and half of rapid growth for Munford’s company Agri-Marketing. The former farm equipment sales representative started with an internet site with 28 links: a page full of text with no weather or markets or news groups.
“I look back at that and think it’s like having a black and white TV or horse and buggy compared to what we’ve got now,” he said.
Now, he has 200 links to his company’s site, and 9,000 people visit it each day.
He has 11 employees and is adding to the payroll, planning offices in other provinces, Iowa and Ukraine.
“Between you, me and the fence post, my goal is to be the Bill Gates of agriculture and the internet,” Munford said.
He doesn’t make any money from farmers using AgFind or checking out his website. Instead, he sells advertising spots on both sites.
His company has also built more than 500 web pages for agricultural clients. Two hundred clients pay Munford to market their sites.
Ever the equipment-dealer, Munford is most excited about the potential AgFind has for used farm equipment and parts.
He has already set up some dealers with simple pages they can update themselves, listing used equipment by make, model and location.
Munford said farmers are always looking for used equipment and AgFind could make the search a lot faster.
