Crop Management Program

Back in 1989 Chipman launched the Crop Management Program. This program was designed as a multi-crop marketing and communication tool based on a series of direct mail pieces sent to horticultural crop growers across Canada. The challenge at the time was to promote our comprehensive line of products across many horticultural crops all over Canada and in two languages - all this on a limited budget. The concept was based on a sophisticated database managed at the time by a small company called Applican in Mississauga. Murray DePape worked closely with Jeffery Bowles to set up the database.


Norm Dreger, Art Melanson, Chris Averink, Mark McLear, Sharon Stevenson, Stephan Laliberté and many others were all part of the marketing team who managed this project at some point. Ed Thiessen and his team provided valuable technical content to develop a number of Technical Information Bulletins and Crop Spray Guides. This was truly a team effort and it proved to be a very successful initiative that continued over a number of years.




A few years after its launch, the Cereals and Oilseeds team adapted this concept and applied it across crops in western Canada.







In 1994, Zeneca Ag Products launched its US equivalent and marketed it under the Farm Assist brand. This initiative is still ongoing today and Syngenta even has its own web site http://www.farmassist.com/.

Here is what Syngenta said about Farm Assist in a 2009 press release:
"As more and more growers embrace the Internet as a convenient source of agronomic information, Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc. has made finding that information a bit easier. FarmAssist.com, the online face of the company for growers and retailers, has been redesigned to enhance the customer experience.

With more than 30,000 visitors per month, FarmAssist® provides users with up-to-the-minute agricultural news and commentary, local weather customised by zip code, market observations and agronomic and product information..."




While today's Farm Assist is quite a bit different to the original Crop Management Program, the concept of providing valuable crop information to farmers across North America is still going strong.





Another bit of Chipman history that started over 20 years ago.

Louis Caron