Why I’m Not Worried About Amazon

Chris Beytes

Columnist Bill McCurry and I have a bet: He says that in six years drones will be widely used in greenhouses to help growers analyze their crop’s needs. They’ll be tiny hummingbird-like devices, pilotless, popping out and back from their charging “nests” to gather information on a crop’s water, nutrient, pest or harvesting status and providing that data to the grower via a micro USB beak.

I believe Bill has lost his mind and I told him so. Drones over a corn or soybean field? Absolutely. Already being beta-tested. But in a greenhouse? It’s overkill and a hazard. And remember, I’m a drone believer, piloting the Ball Publishing video drone, Snoopy.

No, more likely crop sensors will be permanently affixed to posts or mounted on irrigation booms. Or why not just step into a bay, fire up your PlantHealth smartphone app, wave your device in the air and gather the data that way?

I gave Bill a generous six years for his fantasy to come to fruition. There’s a dinner at Cultivate’22 riding on the outcome, and I can already taste the medium rare ribeye and Napa cab …

What makes me so confident? I know growers. I used to be one and I know that growers look for the simplest way to get a job done, not the most complicated. They like to do what has always worked and they don’t change systems or routines just for the sake of change.

Back in the go-go days of the dot.com gold rush, I was offered a lucrative job with a company that was so new, it still had wet paint dripping from its sign. Their plan: Be a centralized online hardgoods supplier into whom you’d email your order, after which it would be delivered to your business in a timely fashion. Think Amazon for dirt and fert.

It sounded plausible on the surface and a colleague even went to work for them. But I didn’t fall for the hype. Like I said, I know growers, and growers like to pick up the phone, dial VJ Grower’s Supply and tell Karen on the other end of the line to send them the usual: a pallet of Metro 500 and a case of 6½-in. white azalea pots.

I politely declined. The company collapsed some months later. I still have the shirt they gave me.

Of course, that was in the previous century. Today, many of us order stuff online almost daily. But like drones in greenhouses, will online ordering trickle down to the garden?

My fellow editors and I had an email discussion about that earlier today. Former editor Bill Calkins instigated it, I can’t recall why, but the upshot was that plants that depend upon a delivery driver are a fail at least half the time. Jen Polanz received three shipments of samples from breeders, “and they all had some damaged plants,” she said. For Bill, the experience of receiving a tomato plant from Amazon was “blah,” he says. “Nothing like choosing a plant, bright green and glistening with dew, from the store.”

That, in a nutshell, is why I’m not worried about online plant sales, any more than I’m worried about drones buzzing me on future greenhouse visits. Yes, we as a society order a lot of stuff online, but it tends to be staples (office supplies) or those things for which the retail experience is unpleasant (shoes) or not private enough (eyeglasses). Or that is esoteric and hard to find locally (ginger oil). We also order online those things that we want NOW and that are hard to find, such as books.

But for things we only buy once in a while (say, in spring) or where we don’t quite know exactly what we want until we see it (a colorful new flower) or when we know we want it dewy fresh (an heirloom tomato plant), a good retailer beats online every time.

Yes, online plant sales are happening and will grow exponentially. Some marginal retailers that don’t offer a better experience than the web will lose business. But if you provide quality, variety, experience and the human touch, you’ll always have customers paying you a visit in person.

I’ll wager a steak dinner on it. GT