

How FarmLogs Is Building Software to Power the Future of Farming - hung
http://stackshare.io/posts/how-farmlogs-is-building-software-to-power-the-future-of-farming

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damon_c
When people start talking about crazy sci-fi scenarios about "the machines
taking over", and I try to ponder realistic ways something like that could
actually happen, my speculative journey currently leads me to the future of
farming automation.

Maybe in 20 years Farmlogs 2035 will be powering fully automated farming that
will be beyond our current imagination in efficiency. Application of machine
learning and evolutionary programming will lead to it doing things with seeds
and crop planting patterns and watering frequency that will be outside of our
ability to comprehend.

Because of this amazing improvement in efficiency, we will need much less land
to support the population. Fields would lie fallow and be turned into condos.
It is at this point that we will be past the point of no return. Further into
the future, if Farmlogs AI 2075 just decides that it has other plans than
feeding humans... or even if there was some weird "bug" that caused a severe
downturn in crop yields for a year. We would have to scramble to grow enough
food without the incomprehensible techniques used by the machines.

Ok... getting back to work now.

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rmason
I don't think that is at all a likely scenario. What I would want to see is a
policy that they won't sell or share the data they collect. If they have one I
haven't been able to find it.

Farm equipment companies and chemical manufacturers have tried to offer this
service before and failed. Partially it was way too early, but the main thing
was farmers didn't trust them with all their data.

I think FarmLogs has the potential to be another YC unicorn if they stick it
out and aren't acquired. Trust me if John Deere or Monsanto were to acquire
them all hell would break loose.

~~~
kfcm
All Hell wouldn't break loose, because FarmLogs isn't unique. Deere and
Monsanto each have their own "cloud-based" farm management products: Deere
with myjohndeere.com, and Monsanto with the Climate Corp umbrella (including
Precision Planting, FieldScripts, etc).

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bman90
I don't get what is so impressive about what is essentially an accounting app.
it's a well done technology but some people get so carried away by this farm
tech stuff... a CRUD app is not going to make farms more productive... I've
seen that farmlogs is using satellite NDVI data now to predict yields etc....
I've done a data science project and found the the NDVI has minimal
correlation to yield. part of we thinks that this is a group of CS people
pretending to be ag engineers. ..

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gumballhead
I think that was the point of the podcast. It started as a typical and shitty
CakePHP / Backbone CRUD app like everything else. You don't need much to get
started.

There's a lot more in there now, but it's still built around boring record
keeping software. I wouldn't even say accounting software.

We're ingesting shitloads of geospatial data specific to each field from
government and third party sources, from weather data like historical rainfall
and temperature, to in season and historical satellite imagery, to sensor
readings from their own combines or smartphones.

This is going to help farmers understand their fields and how their crops are
growing better and soon allow us to provide agronomic services like variable
rate prescriptions. We're not predicting yield from NDVI. There is a
correlation there, but like you said it's moderate.

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retrogradeorbit
Australian startup AgWorld has been building such software for a while now.

[http://www.agworld.co/](http://www.agworld.co/)

~~~
thomasfoster96
I think there's about a dozen startups in Australia doing something similar.
Sort of makes me wonder why Farm Logs is getting so much press coverage
recently - I can only suppose that being in the US and having done YC is a
huge boost.

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mrmister
This is what climate corp ([http://www.climate.com/](http://www.climate.com/))
does as well, correct?

