Charles Crane/MDN Site Manager Eric Johnson and driver Beau Nelson stand next to a Farmers Business Network trailer at the company’s Minot warehouse on Tuesday.

A tech company seeking to be the Amazon for agriculture operates one of its largest warehouses in Minot, using technology and responsible on-farm delivery to streamline the logistics of farming.

Farmers Business Network’s Minot site manager Eric Johnson described the warehouse in the Magic City as a “final mile” facility in the company’s distribution network, and said FBN’s goal is to be a “one stop shop” for farmers around the country.

“Our company does a lot of different things for farmers. We primarily distribute farm products, chemicals and things of that nature like insecticides. That’s what we focus on, but we have other arms of the business that focus on farm loans, insurance, agronomy stuff,” Johnson said. “It’s quite a wide variety of offers. We want to be able to offer a wide range of things for customers.”

Johnson leads a small team of drivers at the site providing local delivery of its products across a 250-mile area in the state, with the goal of delivering them to the farms in two days or less. Johnson said FBN’s logistics network provided speed and efficiency for farmers to address emergent issues like insect issues.

“We want to streamline the process and make it easy for them. We do have folks out in the field, so if they need someone to go out and give them information on the product they can get that. We want to maximize their return on investment by them telling us what they need and then responding to that,” Johnson said. “We want the customer to have all the tools at their fingertips, and that anything that they need we have it available for them. We hear that every season, the more time they can spend out in the field and the less they spend on this kind of thing the better.”

While FBN affords its customers a tech-oriented approach to acquiring farming and ranching related products through an online ordering system, Johnson said maintaining the personal touch was integral to the job.

“The technology piece is a big focus for this company, but us as the on-farm delivery I like to think we’re the personal touch. We’re the face of the company. That is one benefit of having physical locations and a delivery apparatus. We actually get to interface with the customers so they put a face to the name,” Johnson said. “In this area, we still have customers that prefer more of the traditional approach. They prefer to talk to us directly. They prefer to be able to shake hands with somebody. They love it when our drivers come out because they recognize them. Then we have customers who are on the complete other end of the spectrum where they grew up in the Amazon times where they just went online and ordered it, and it shows up at their house. We like to be both.”

That said, Johnson FBN is working on an artificial intelligence driven agronomy system which will make recommendations to customers driven by their individual farm’s data and needs.

“It’s an interesting frontier, AI. This company definitely embraces technology. We’re always finding out what we can do to better ourselves in that regard, but don’t ever want to lose the personal touch. You could consider us a technology company in that we’re always pursuing that, at least that facility and the others on the ground. It’s important to have that personal relationship with the farmer,” Johnson said. “In the spring, with our unique weather up here, farmers have a very specific window for growing. When they need it, we need to get it out to them as soon as possible.”