Toowoomba Feed Central launches online marketplace LocalAg
Leveraging on the importance of good relationships within the agriculture industry, an award-winning Darling Downs feed company has launched a platform which takes the risk out of buying and selling agricultural products online.
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An award-winning family agriculture business has launched an online marketplace designed to bring buyers and sellers together, along with the assistance of a chatbot, named after the owner’s late father, a much-loved and well-respected agricultural icon.
Last year, Feed Central, a hay grading business based in Charlton, was awarded Toowoomba business of the year for their innovation in analysing the nutritional content of hay.
Now they are bringing together not just their expertise, but also the importance of building connection and relationships within the agriculture industry, with an online marketplace for farmers to buy or sell a variety of products.
“There’s a real trend where the farmer wants to build their own brand and build their own reputation with the end-user and the local marketplace,” Feed Central owner Tim Ford said.
The platform features profiles, where relationships can be formed and payments passed around in a safe and secure environment.
“We’ve been doing business for 20 years and business has changed, farm businesses have changed, technologies come in, and this puts all of those trends together and allows business to happen the way that the way that the clients want it to happen,” Mr Ford said.
Assisting the staff and moderations of the platform is “Kev”, a chatbot named after Mr Ford’s late father, Kevin, who passed away in 2021.
Kevin Ford and his wife Marie were sheep and wheat farmers in northern Victoria and southern NSW before they moved to Toowoomba in 1986.
When Kev retired, he spent his time at Feed Central as well as travelling Australia to inspect hay for the business, and much of his knowledge he not only passed onto his son, but the entire team at Feed Central.
He was known for his willingness to share information, and “just ask Kev” was the answer to many questions.
When the idea of the platform was in its infancy, the team remembered “how dad would be here in the shed teaching them about hay, teaching them about agriculture, and taking them on road trips”, Mr Ford said.
“I was not sure, but the team insisted, and so the chatbot was called Kev,” he said.
It was the reputation his parents built in their time as farmers which secured many of Feed Central’s clients, he said.
“Bringing people together is a founding part of Feed Central,” he said.
“We want people in Miles doing business with people in Bendigo - and we can make all that happen with the technology that’s available.”
The launch was doubled up with the Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce’s first business event of the year, which drew almost 250 people from the city’s business community.
“We want to shine a spotlight on excellence in Toowoomba, and the more successful our businesses in the region are, the more it radiates out to the rest of the community,” chamber president Myf Rigby said.
Feed Central cleaned the floor at the Little Pig Consulting Business Excellence Awards last year, taking home first place in the agricultural, regional, innovation technology categories and finally taking the stage to claim the grand prize of business of the year.
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Originally published as Toowoomba Feed Central launches online marketplace LocalAg
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