Field of Dreams

HOW AGFUSE IS PLANTING THE SEED OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FARMERS

Facebook is to social butterflies as AgFuse is to hard-working farmers. The free social networking app and site was launched for the agricultural community right before the fall harvest of 2014.

The brainchild of AgFuse: Pat Rogers, a fifth generation farmer in Marlboro County, S.C. He earned a bachelor’s degree in packaging science in 2005 from Clemson University, one of only two institutions in the country at the time offering the unique major that combined many courses of study in food product packaging.

“But when I did my internship in a factory indoors, I decided working indoors wasn’t as fun as I anticipated,” says Rogers. “I actually wanted to come home and farm and really got into the tech side of farming.”

He attended an ag tech conference solo in St. Louis in 2014, listening to one of the keynote speakers wrap up his lecture amidst 2,000 other farmers, and he realized he didn’t know anyone. Which was the spark for AgFuse.

“I started thinking that there’s got to be a better way for us all to connect, network and learn in the ag world because we’re so geographically spread out; it’s just the nature of the business,” says Rogers. “Farming is rural, and, you know, it’s not like we’re seeing a lot of our contemporaries.”

Fast-forward to later that year, when a couple of hurricanes swept through the area, dumping a tremendous amount of rain on the crops and forcing Rogers inside his home with a lot of free time.

“That’s when I tried to make the best use of my free time,” says Rogers. “I kind of came up with what they call a minimum viable product, put up a landing page and started some social media accounts and saw where there was some definite interest in something like this. I put together a little team of freelancers and we started the project in full force then. I mean, I had a farm tech background, but as far as coding and running the website and things like that, it’s been a lot of learning on the fly.”

Today, AgFuse has just over 5,000 members that extends beyond the agricultural community in the upstate to farmers worldwide. Think of it as digital irrigation in a field of work where communication is in a drought. It’s a platform that’s the first of its kind, where farmers, suppliers and ag professionals can connect, share information, ask questions and form associations in a simple, user-friendly format.

Become a member, create a user profile and gain access to a sounding board on the latest agricultural innovations, research, policies and more. Members can post under their own account or under special interest groups, i.e., peanut farmers, cotton and such.

“I wanted the platform to be kind of like a Swiss army knife of digital communications,” says Rogers.

What he means by that is AgFuse not only offers posting features, but also local weather; commodity quotes; the option to post long-form articles on products, machinery and trends; the capability to join interest groups; and “AgAnswers,” where you can have a Q&A with fellow members.

“Farming is very unique in that regard,” says Rogers. “We’re neighbors and, supposedly, they should be our competitors, but that’s not really how it works in the real world. Our neighbors are people that we rely on. And that’s what makes the farming community unique.”

Rogers reports that AgFuse site traffic and metrics are growing really nicely.

“We’re excited to see these compound on themselves,” he adds. “I guess the goal now is to continue to get more content out there to get more users and more site traffic. We’re certainly not resting on our laurels here, but we’ve got a good product in place now. It’s just more about fostering the community aspect of it.”

When Rogers isn’t maintaining his farm or AgFuse, he loves to spend time outdoors and watch Clemson football when in season.