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Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

> Even farmers, it might not be necessary, but it can make a huge difference.

As a software developer by day, farmer by night, I'm not sure there is much overlap. Some of the problem solving skills I learned on the farm have made me a better programmer, I expect, but I don't see much advantage in building software for my farm. Anything you can dream of is available commercially at a fraction of the cost it would take to build it yourself. As the saying goes, technology is developed in the military, adopted by agriculture, and then exposed to the rest of the world.

That said, the story is quite different for my new side venture in a consumer market, however. I could easily turn development into a full time job in that industry. There is a lot lacking in what already exists.

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I'm not sure that's a saying outside of agriculture.

It was on HN that I first heard it. I'm not sure it is a saying within agriculture. We take for granted the advanced technology that we get to play with.

Advanced compared to what? Probably not microchip factories...

Do you have a link?

It seems like an interesting idea.

> I don't see much advantage in building software for my farm.

Controlled environment agriculture is heavily data driven and is a fast growing field. Same with genetically modified crops.

All agriculture is heavily data driven. It is not that you couldn't put your skills to use, in theory, but it is not economically viable to do so as there are businesses who have full-time employees doing it better and cheaper. In order to stay competitive with other farmers you have to turn to the third-party providers, not hack it yourself.

To make such a thing economically viable you'd have to find a problem space that is either unexplored or unique to your business. Both are unlikely to begin with – everything you can think of has already been done – but in the odd chance you do have something in the former case, you really need to dedicate all your time to it in order to make it a commercial success. That pretty much means giving up farming. The latter case doesn't really come up either as farming is a commodity business. There is no benefit in finding differentiation in almost all cases. If you really have a good idea unique to your business, your neighbour is still going to want to copy you, which brings us back to the first case.

Maybe genetic algorithms could help you optimize correlated questions you might need answering.

And if that's the case, someone has already thought of it and I can simply buy their product at a fraction of the cost that would require me to implement the same. Not only that, but it will be higher quality too as they have staff working on it day in, day out, while I've only got time here and there, between farm work, to work on it. There is no economic incentive for me to build it myself. It would be a net drain on my business to try.

I know from working in other industries that there is often a business advantage to building custom tools. I don't see it in farming. Being a commodity business, the businesses are pretty much carbon copies of each other. There is no real advantage in differentiating yourself with specialized tools like there is in non-commodity businesses.

If you really, honestly, feel like you've found a novel idea that could help your farm business, you'd be better to quit farming and focus on building a tool that you can sell to all farmers. But it remains, if you can think of it, it is almost already guaranteed to exist. Agriculture is fiercely competitive.

You are falling victim to the everything has already been invented line of thinking. There are plenty of things still needed for agriculture. Some of them just require thinking about turning the industry on it's head.

For example no one likes Round-Up, people are not big fans of GM crops, one of the reasons we GM crops is the make them Round-Up resistant. The big player in the space has no incentive to change due to the fact that they own the IP to round-up and they own the IP to the GM crops that can resist it.

But what we are really talking about is getting rid of weeds. They way it is done now leaves a lot to be desired. A way to fix it is automated machines with object detection that eradicate weeds. Primary problem solved, weeds are gone, secondary problem solved Round-up is not needed and as a bonus not buying GM seeds.

The problem is no one is looking at it from that equation because either they have a vested interest in the current order of things or they do not have the technical chops.

That is just of the top of my head there are thousands of problems to address in the agricultural space.

I mean there are pest problems. There are water management problems. There are pollution problems. There are yield to market problems.

Anything that has a workflow has potential improvements.

> You are falling victim to the everything has already been invented line of thinking.

Because in agriculture it is pretty much true. We are talking about the most technically advanced industry in existence, other than the military. As new technologies make new ideas possible, someone will jump on it immediately. Me, also trying to worry about operating my farm, will always be late to the party.

> A way to fix it is automated machines with object detection that eradicate weeds.

And that already exists and is commercially available. It is somewhat amusing that your best example of something that hasn't been invented yet is something that has been around for a long time.

It is not exactly cost effective against Roundup in all cases yet, but do you really think that if I tinker for an hour per day, if I'm lucky, that I'm going to magically find an efficiency that teams of people working full time on the problem wouldn't find on their own?

I am feeling that you continue to grossly underestimate what can be done with limited spare time between chores when competing against businesses with teams of technologists focused on the problems full-time.

I would argue that CERN like mega-projects are just as technical as agriculture.

A vertically integrated farming company is going to beat collections of farms with cobbled together technology. We are not yet at that end state.

That said, the commenter who said that farmers can make use of computerization did not say that they would employ engineers directly, and I see several other commenters falling victim to that narrow interpretation.

Controlled environment agriculture = greenhouse. There are two scales of this operation: small scale low-tech option which require just thermostat and fans and then you have big scale high tech versions that costs many millions of dollars and come with all the controllers built-in.

For low tech option there is just not enough margin and leverage to make it worth spending your time on it. For high tech options you are having millions in debt and another million or two in running cost (labor, seed, electricity) and with margins in single digits you are probably don't want to risk playing with your recipes. Safer bet is to outsource your tech needs to the companies that have teams of people working on just one single problem.

> As a software developer by day, farmer by night, I'm not sure there is much overlap

Depends what you need it for https://tractorhacking.github.io/

Once you get into level of assets that require tractor like this your main job is financial planning.

Consider your ability to automate tasks on your farm (watering, checking soil health, product QA). All of those tasks being automated potentially increase your output.

> I could easily turn development into a full time job in that industry. There is a lot lacking in what already exists.

Care to describe what's missing in a little more detail?

The thing is that all farms (producing a given product) are pretty much the same. When something is a commodity, there is no benefit in differentiating your business through process. A tomato is a tomato is a tomato. Nobody cares about what it took to get it to market. This means that everyone converges in the same direction. This means that the tools that are out there for other farms are pretty much guaranteed to fit right into your operation with ease. It would actually be counterproductive, economically speaking, to try and recreate this existing tools. It will cost you more in the end.

In this consumer space, there is more effort to try and be different. In this case, the customer notices processes and better processes make for a better customer experience. That is how you beat the competition. Often the tools that are out there don't fit nice and tidy into the way we wish to do business. They are either tailored for other businesses or try to be a jack of all trades, master of none. There is all kinds of room to build software that is specific to our operation, and beneficially so. There is a room to get a leg up on the competition if you do it well.

As a bit of an aside, when you're paying $500,000 for a tractor what you get, in terms of technology, is also quite different to a $100/month SaaS product. That is the other big thing I have noticed is simply quality of software. Nobody could ever afford to pay $500,000 for a system in this consumer industry, so the options that are out there are quite low quality. Understandably – I know all too well from my day job the corners we often have to cut and the concessions we have to make to keep things within budget – but in an ideal world the software would be better.

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