Embracing Transparency: The Future of Agricultural Trade in a Digital World

Steve Gulley, founder of the digital trade platform Mercado, is a seasoned leader in the agricultural and dairy industries and a passionate advocate for modernizing agricultural trade. With decades of experience driving innovation and being the son of a farming family that dates back generations, Gulley believes digital platforms are key to enhancing how agricultural products are bought and sold. He envisions a future where transparency, efficiency, and broader market access become the norm simply by gradually adopting what digital tools offer.

While the agricultural industry has long been a cornerstone of the global economy, its trading methods often lag behind technological advancements. Reliance on personal networks, phone calls, and platforms like WhatsApp has limited transparency and slowed progress. Although these traditional methods will always have their place, Gulley believes that embracing digital trade platforms can unlock untapped potential, reduce costs, and open the playing field for all participants.

The Case for Transparency

“Everyone wants transparency, but not everyone wants to give it,” Gulley explains. This paradox has created significant resistance within the agricultural industry. Many stakeholders are hesitant to abandon the opacity of traditional methods, fearing increased competition or loss of control over pricing information.

However, platforms like Mercado, powered by Nui Markets, offer a compelling additional mechanism to weave into buy/sell approaches.? By providing a centralised digital marketplace, they make real-time price data, bids, and offers accessible to all participants, facilitating more efficient market movements.

In the almond and walnut trade, for example, users of Mercado have already witnessed dramatic cost savings—over $1,500 per container—by streamlining the process and reducing third-party commissions. With over 20 million pounds of bids and offers placed through the platform so far and 29 registered participants, the impact is tangible and growing.

Digital trading comes to life on Mercado

With Gulley’s platform only a few months up and running, he can already speak to the tangible experiences that underscore the advantages of adopting digital solutions in agricultural trade:

1. Efficiency: Digital platforms reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, such as price negotiations and reporting, which often take up more time in a salesperson’s day than actually selling. With 24/7 access and instantaneous and simultaneous updates, Mercado enables buyers and sellers to act swiftly, maximising their productivity
2. Cost Savings: Traditional brokers and traders often charge higher commissions, typically around 2%. By contrast, Mercado’s flat-fee structure offers significant savings, allowing users to retain more value.
3. Flexibility: Unlike other rigid digital sales systems that force you to conform to one way of doing things, Mercado supports ad hoc transactions and flexible tender processes. This adaptability makes it an attractive option for those seeking to diversify their trading strategies.
4. Future Innovations: The platform’s vision includes introducing futures and options contracts for nuts, a move that would benefit not only farmers but also financial institutions looking to hedge risks.

Challenges to Adoption

Despite its advantages, the road to widespread adoption is not without hurdles. Many in the industry remain sceptical of new, transparent practices. Gulley notes that the five most active users of Mercado recognise digital trade as the future. These early adopters see the platform’s potential to drive efficiency and profitability.

“People haven’t had these options successfully before,” Gulley says. “They’re used to calling a broker or trader for information, not also opening a screen to check real-time market data. It’s a mindset shift.”

“Adopting digital trade doesn’t need to be an either-or situation. You can continue with your existing channels and experiment with digital tenders to see what works best. There are times when one or the other will be more beneficial for your needs at the time, which is why maintaining a presence in both is crucial. “

Innovation as a Necessity

In a rapidly evolving world, where trends like sustainability and plant-based diets shape consumer expectations, innovation is no longer optional for the agricultural sector. To keep pace with these changes, all participants, from farmers to buyers, must embrace tools that enhance transparency, effectiveness, and efficiency.

Platforms like Mercado provide this opportunity by offering both backwards-looking data and real-time insights. Participants can benchmark their performance against the market and use the data to drive strategic decisions.

As Gulley puts it, “You’ll never get away from bilateral trade, but a sophisticated digital platform gives you another option—one that lets you work smarter, not harder.”

A Vision for the Future

The nut industry stands on the brink of transformation. For decades, it thrived on traditional methods, with a significant reliance on brokers, personal relationships, and limited market visibility. This worked well during times of consistent profitability, when, as Steve Gulley puts it, “everyone was fat and happy.” However, recent years of tighter margins and financial challenges have shown that the industry is not immune to downturns. This shift has created an opportunity to reimagine how business is done.

Mercado is at the forefront of this change.?

But the vision for the future goes beyond just streamlining current practices. Gulley sees a world where tools like futures and options contracts become integral to the nut industry. While these financial instruments are standard in other agricultural markets like corn, wheat, and dairy, their absence in the nut sector is striking. Futures and options would enable farmers and buyers to hedge risks, providing stability and predictability in an often volatile market. They also create a new, easier way for risk-takers to speculate on market movements.

Efforts to introduce these mechanisms are already underway. Gulley has been in talks with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) for several years, even bringing representatives to industry conferences to showcase the potential scale and impact of such tools. The adoption of futures and options would benefit not only farmers but also financial institutions, offering them a transparent and standardised way to manage risk.

Gulley points out that many California farmers and end users are already familiar with digital platforms and financial tools through their work in other crops like dairy or corn. “It might be a stretch for a segment of the industry, but not for the entire industry,” he says, expressing confidence that the timing is right for this leap forward.

Beyond financial instruments, the future of platforms like Mercado lies in their ability to provide comprehensive market intelligence. Weekly price updates, monthly trade recaps, and USDA shipping reports already add value to participants, but the long-term potential includes even more sophisticated analytics and benchmarking. Imagine a system where sellers can compare their performance against market averages, or buyers can instantly identify pricing trends across regions.

Gulley encapsulates the platform’s promise with a simple but powerful idea: “You can do way more with less.” By consolidating the complex web of market interactions into a single, user-friendly platform, Mercado empowers the industry to evolve. The ultimate goal? A nut trading market that is not just more transparent and efficient but also more resilient, adaptable, and prepared for the future.