Contrarian Thinking in Agriculture

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

In his blog post titled “33 Mental Models for the Modern Agribusiness Leader,” Shane Thomas refers to contrarian thinking as one pathway toward creating advantage in business. He argues that in competitive, commodity-driven markets like agriculture, doing something different can unlock unconventional growth.

Thomas… “ You can do the same thing as everybody else and be right, but you don't have any upside because all of the upside gets competed away by everybody doing the same thing. You see that in ag retail, you see that in commoditized industries, and that's kind of the core of it. So the goal is you need to do something contrarian and to do something contrarian—I mean, it sounds all fancy. It's just doing something different. But doing something different comes from having a unique insight about a market, a product, customer or whatever a problem, whatever it might be.”

Thomas said these insights can come from stepping outside of your usual circles and being willing to explore and experiment.

Thomas… “ But I think a lot of insights tend to fundamentally come from listening to customers, looking at trends and things that are coming on. And again, that sounds very high level and vague, but I don't think that's inherently wrong. I think part of it just comes from being able to, to your point, kind of increase your surface area. And I think the only way to do that is to have conversations with people that maybe you don't see a ton of value in. It's always this trade off all the time—do I wanna have a call with this person? But that's where some of the best insights can come from.”

Find more agribusiness news and analysis at upstream.ag.