St. Vincent area woman creates app for farmers to get better prices

St. Vincent farmer, Lynn Dargis, launched her app Farmbucks last week. Image credit: Michelle Larmand Photography.

Lynn Dargis has operated her parent’s farm near St. Vincent for over ten years but became frustrated with the amount of information buyers and sellers need to collect to do business.

That’s when she decided to create her own website and app for farmers to get the best bang for their buck.

“I found I didn’t have time to search all the different websites to find the best price, it just wasn’t efficient,” said Dargis.

“I set out looking for a company that had built something that I was looking for, but I couldn’t find anything like it,” she said.

Her app called Farmbucks aggregates all the available bids on grain, wheat, barley, etc into one place so it’s easier for farmers to find out the best price.

The app went public last week and now farmers can subscribe to her service for a year or months at a time.

Since farmers have to consider many factors when buying or selling, grading factors, protein levels, premiums and discounts, she said she’s tried to integrate Farmbucks as a one-stop shop to understand the market.

“I’m just trying to integrate more information online, so you avoid that first step of speaking with your buyer. And that’s only speaking with them at that moment, but prices change every ten minutes in the morning,” Dargis said.

Farmers who subscribe set their radius, pick the crops they want to see, and then the top bids are organized highest to lowest.

“It’s to easily identify where those pricing opportunities are farmers…even myself, I have a habit of picking my favorite website from a buyer, but you’re not getting the full picture because there’s often wide price differences in the market,” she said.

The app is focused on Western Canada, but farmers can look from just about anywhere she says if they don’t mind paying the freight cost.

Over 300 hundred people have signed up since its launch.

Dargis says farmers stand to lose nothing since they are already comparing prices online.

“I think this is something other industries have already been doing, but the Ag industry has been hesitant here in Canada. Maybe they seem to think it’s too competitive. But if you look at Amazon, there will be ten different prices and you choose who you buy it from.”