Weirdly, the thing I find missing most from this discussion is finance. If we take the premise that information is valuable (decrease inputs, improve yields) a

Weirdly, the thing I find missing most from this discussion is finance. If we take the premise that information is valuable (decrease inputs, improve yields) and that equipment is valuable (automation), then there's a very real return to be gained by using these valuable products. What's nuts to me is that we would ever ask the farmers to bear the risk of these products. I mean, sure they could I suppose (better returns overall!), but it concentrates all the risk in the worst places. I feel like there's a much better opportunity here for a targeted financial product. "Implement our methods with our data, and we'll skim a percentage of your profits." Imagine if the risk of buying a new tractor was gone, because it was provided by the company. The risk of data integration was also gone, because it's guaranteed to work with the provided tractor. And the risk that the data is crap is also gone, because the financing and return risk is borne by a diverse number of institutional investors. Almost like weather / crop insurance, but much much bigger. For the farmer, the sale is simple: Do our thing, and you don't have to worry about paying for stuff that may not be valuable. You might make slightly less total profit in the good years as the price of offloading that risk. For the investors, it's also a great story: look at these great startups! Wouldn't you like a piece of that productivity and return? ...and maybe the startups are wrong, and the equipment doesn't work, and everyone learns a lot while they go bankrupt. Everyone except the farmer, who offloaded the risk. Surely this is a thing that someone is working on?!? I'm sure it's available in bits and pieces, but a unified financing and operational solution seems like it would be a slam dunk.