LP Gas, July 2014
AGrICULTUrE Continued from page 34 A professional bunch Mark Leitman director of business development and marketing for the Propane Education Research Council PERC heaps praise on todays farmer He says the propane industrys farming customers are professional businesses that pay their bills on time and utilize technology in their daily operation Farmers have been mapping fields with GPS for years Leitman says They use technology to treat specific parts of the land through a process called precision agriculture The latest propane fueled grain dryers feature advances that allow farmers to monitor operations online or from a smartphone or tablet Numbers from the recently released 2012 Census of Agriculture also help to support the claim that farms are trending toward technology Farms with Internet access rose from 565 percent in 2007 to about 70 percent in 2012 with 40 percent using a digital subscriber line DSL connection The perception of the farmer has been slow to change Leitman says Maybe one farmer or customer does something in an old fashioned way and it can paint a picture of the entire group unfairly sometimes Energy intensive A propane retailer located in farm country has much to gain by reaching out to potential agricultural customers Leitman says Farmers spend billions of dollars each year on energy expenses In fact according to the Census of Agriculture nearly 2 million farms reported spending 166 billion in a category called gasoline fuels and oils which includes propane That amount is up about 4 billion from 2007 but still accounts for only 5 percent of all production expenses If nothing else I love to keep reminding the propane industry that these farmers are spending billons of dollars on energy so lets not forget about them Leitman says Companies out there make money supporting the ag industry While farmers are spending billions of dollars on energy they are burning millions of gallons of propane The latest report from the American Petroleum Institute on sales of natural gas liquids shows the agricultural sector burned more than 800 million gallons of propane in 2012 Iowa North Carolina Minnesota California and Illinois were the top states for propane gallon sales to the agricultural market accounting for 48 percent of the total volume If you sell gas in my community you have to sell to people who are using it says Dan Stangle owner of Stangle Propane which supplies Carnahan Sons in Indiana If you want to sit around and wait on residential which is great we sell a lot of that as well you would just miss it Propane is helping to fuel farm production that in turn is leading to record agricultural sales U S producers sold about 395 billion worth of agricultural products in 2012 with California Iowa Texas Nebraska and Minnesota leading the way Continued on page 38 36 LPGas July 2014 www LPGasmagazine com
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