FarmLogs (YC W12) Letting the Cloud Watch Over the Farm
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm all for this. It's a field I've considered many times. I'm an urban homesteader and programmer, so I see the value. I want you to succeed. Please understand my criticism is meant only to further your progress. I love what you're doing.
My concern is that your product looks like a toy. Farmers are serious about their work. They aren't playing a Zynga game or... Agricola. That farm equipment costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Farmers across the nation have lost $20 Billion worth of crops this summer. http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/news/economy/drought-crop-in...
Please, get a more sophisticated look. Let farmers know you are serious. If I could look at your website and believe you are serious, I may not need someone else to tell me you are serious.
I like their site because it looks so simple to use and shows it could be very valuable very quickly, kind of like an iPhone. I'd be surprised if they don't see some considerable adoption, esp among the newer generation of farmers.
This makes me curious. What brings you to HN? :)
I'm not sure anyone thinks "I'm losing money and dammit this web app isn't reflecting my mood at this moment."
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2012/s3511968.htm http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2012/s3501665.htm
there's been keen interest in computers and software in agriculture for a good 30 odd years that I'm aware of, the first thought that crosses my mind when reading about your software is it's apparent dependence on the internet and regular cell towers.
I'm nor sure how widespread good Internet is across the US farming areas, in Australia nothing is taken for granted in most farming regions - telephone, power, cell phone coverage, gas supplies, etc are all more or less present in many places but all are subject to accidental cut out from a few hours, to a few days, to sometimes a few weeks.
There's always been a strong interest in solutions that continue to function when connections to the rest of the world are lost for a bit.
I signed up for the trial to see what it was like. The UI is very simple and looks easy to use. The only thing that I might recommend is that you look into standardized farm management taxonomy.
Serious farmers will go take classes on how to scale and run profitable farms. Most of these classes teach them to separate tasks/costs into Enterprises and Overheads per field or other terms that I am personally not too familiar with. It looks like you're heading the right direction, I just didn't see a lot of the terms I hear thrown around when talking with my wife or father-in-law. They have both sat in on classes that I described above although they are farmers - they will do and say things their own way, class or not.
Here's a Farm Management Glossary that looks pretty decent. Perhaps you can start here and compare your software's definitions with these:
Good luck!
I'm speaking entirely hypothetically here, as I've never been anywhere near a farm, but having seen ITIL, Six Sigma and other enterprisey terminologies vary between methodologies, I can't help but wonder if they're not using the right lexicon because maybe they're using a 'different', competing lexicon?
Either way, that looks to be a great tip and solid criticism.
They do use GPS in the tractors, mostly to minimize overlap/gaps. They used a big paper ledger to do bookkeeping until my brother took over the bookkeeping, and I think he now uses Quicken (not QuickBooks). The farm is a strange mix of low tech and high tech, and I suspect that's not unusual.
If you want to advertise to grain farmers in Western Canada, then one good way is to buy an ad in The Western Producer (a newspaper). Agricultural trade shows are probably a better bet though. I know they go to the Farm Progress Show every year.
I've no relation to Agworld, except that they're based in the same city as I am (Perth, Australia).
This could be the only tool in fighting against massive congloms like Monsanto PLEASE NEVER SELL TO THEM - THEY WILL TRY TO DEVOUR YOU
FarmLogs could be used to actually teach ANYONE how to farm efficiently.
You take the data that each farmer uses to track their crop and harvest and teach people how to do the same.
You will need to incorporate sensors into the system, such as the TWINE SENSOR [1] into your system -- track the weather and moisture for every location, as well as the crop.
You can build a DB of the yields over time for any given farm. Use this to inform people of the best times and conditions to plant various crops.
You can track man-power-hours to yields as well and be able to help people understand that if they want to grow X amount of Y crop, they need Z people and Z1 hours...
Finally, the most obvious, is cost - you can then say that for a property of X size, you need Y labor and Z dollars to produce Z1 crop!
Seriously - alongside fake meat - if you have an APP that can actually TRAIN a farmer, this is farking planet changing.
Use this info to build out a tutorial to train 3rd world people to micro-farm with HIGH yields.
There was this articla about big-data being the next billion dollar industry: big farm data will be the trillion dollar industry. NEVER SELL OUT TO MONSANTO. NEVER.
Ultimately:
Build an app that asks me what my resources and interests are, and help me build a farm that suits my capabilities: If i have an apartment in seatlle with a balcony of 200 square feet and $50 per month to apply to that square footage, what can I grow.
Knowing what the cost per squarefoot to yield is for massive famrs will allow such an engine to be built.
Every single person on the planet should be able to access this app - enter their capabilities and determine how much they could produce to either sustain themselves or sell to the local market.
This is revolutionary. If you can build this into an app that is stand alone, it should be married to the open-source civ kit [2]
Look at big data as the future - this is the biggest (most important) data.. [3]
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-li...
[2] http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Civilization_Starter_Kit_D...
[3] http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/doug-hornig/is-bi...
This being a site for entrepreneurs, I'm going to give a different piece of advice: if the likes of Monsanto come to you and attempt to buy you out for a price and other terms that you find acceptable, do it. Do it in a heartbeat. You can do far more good with a bunch of money than without it; you can always circle back and make another attempt to change farming for the better, and be in a better position to do it.
But at the end of the day, you need to do what's right for you; not me, not the parent, not the world. I wish you all the best of luck.
The risks inherent in farming resemble those of starting a new business, but without the potential upside.
Monsanto is going to do what they will, with our without your small (to them) farm. Better plan of action is to remove the distortion in the marketplace caused by the farm subsidies.
But as daeken says, take the money and do good with it. Like start a small business helping small farmers.
"you need to do what's right for you; not me, not the parent, not the world"
Be a selfish self-centered piece of shit for the money...
That is what you just stated.
Sorry - but you MUST have some better vision of the world than "do whats right for your own wallet"
If you don't. in the long term - you are a part (albeit potentially very small) of the reason civilization fails.
I am 1000% against what daeken posted.
Poor form.
Read it several times - I did no such thing as straw-man this argument. I simply disagree with his position. I didnt call him out as being completely irrelevant in any manner...
If I did, and I am unaware of this, please educate me.
Thanks
You somehow think selling your company to another is matter of morality. It's not. An stupid CRUD app is not gonna give big-agro powers they didn't already have. This is not a strain of grains that can feed the planet: it's just a web app, specific to the farm-management "line of business". This is the Remember The Milk of agriculture technology.
Biggest revolutions in agriculture will not be in software, but in geo-politics, law, finance, real-estate, insurance, equipment, transportation, fertilizers, packaging and preservation, and genetic engineering, etc. Real stuff.
Farming is our bread and butter, meat and potatoes. Food is the #1 on every living being's list of Important Shit™.
So, sell out, sell your apps and move on.
> Build an app that asks me what my resources and interests are, and help me build a farm that suits my capabilities: If i have an apartment in seatlle with a balcony of 200 square feet and $50 per month to apply to that square footage, what can I grow.
Ignoring the challenges of scaling the volumes down, I can tell you right now that my average input costs for 200 square feet of grain is about $2. You can expect to make about $0.20-$0.40 after harvest. Vegetables will have better returns, but you are unlikely to grow more than you can eat yourself in such a small area. For a garden, you may as well plant what you like to eat. You don't really need an app for that.