> Anyone who has been farming for years already makes pretty close to optimal decisions based on the available data about crop prices, weather, soil status, lab

> Anyone who has been farming for years already makes pretty close to optimal decisions based on the available data about crop prices, weather, soil status, labor rates, etc. I'm not sure if you're including software analysis in your notion of "based on the available data", but if not, then this would absolutely not be true - unaided humans, even veteran growers who've been managing the same fields for decades, do not make anywhere close to optimal decisions. They make good ones, generally, and can be long-term profitable with relative ease, but it's absolutely not even close to what you get when you bring intelligent software into the mix.