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> 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

> 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.

dejv 7y ago
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.
randomdata 7y ago
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.
- mycall 7y ago
  Maybe genetic algorithms could help you optimize correlated questions you might need answering.
  - randomdata 7y ago
    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.
    - kls 7y ago
      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.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  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.

> 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.

dejv 7y ago

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.

randomdata 7y ago

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.

mycall 7y ago
Maybe genetic algorithms could help you optimize correlated questions you might need answering.
- randomdata 7y ago
  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.
  - kls 7y ago
    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.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
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.