Saskatoon-based crop input supplier AgraCity has notified its farmer customers it is unable to fulfill outstanding orders for product that they've already paid for.
"AgraCity has experienced some cash flow issues and has been in a process to refinance our business. This process has unfortunately taken much longer than expected and has resulted in product availability issues this spring," the company says, in an email to customers on Friday, June 6.
"All outstanding product orders are being cancelled and being converted into a product credit. All current cancellations will be converted into a product credit as well," the email continues.
The update follows weeks of anecdotal reports from farmers—both directly to RealAgriculture and on social media—who’ve shared about difficulties obtaining herbicides ordered from AgraCity.
AgraCity says it has saved Canadian farmers millions of dollars per year since it started operating around twenty years ago, selling crop protection products to farms that are members of Farmers of North America (FNA). The company supplies generic crop inputs directly to farmers, bypassing distributors and retailers in the traditional crop input supply chain.
Court records show AgraCity, which is co-owned by brothers Jason and James Mann, has been involved in multiple court cases, including a long-running legal dispute between the brothers that reached the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan in 2023. The dispute centres around ownership of AgraCity and its relationship with FNA, which is solely owned by James Mann. Both AgraCity and FNA also have ties with Genesis Fertilizers, for which Jason Mann is president and CEO.
FNA issued a separate press release on June 8, in which James Mann says he only found out Friday afternoon that AgraCity had stopped delivering prepaid product to farmers.
"By court order, I have not been in charge of AgraCity since 2017. Since that time I have been concerned about various issues with the management of AgraCity and have been fighting these issues in court," writes James Mann, in the update from FNA.
"In April of last year I brought an application to have a neutral third party manage or inspect AgraCity’s finances. This application was heard on March 13 of this year and we are still waiting for the court’s decision," says James Mann.
In Friday's email to customers, AgraCity says it will be contacting each affected customer individually in the coming months to clear up outstanding balances with new product deliveries. In the meantime, the company says it will not be answering incoming phone calls.
"AgraCity is confident that we will be able to resolve our outstanding liabilities..." the company said. "We are going to do our best to get this done as soon as possible. It is our intention to provide everyone with updates on a periodic basis as we work through this process."
Editor's note: This article was updated with quotes and references to FNA's June 8 press release.
