
FarmLogs (YC W12) Letting the Cloud Watch Over the Farm - vollmarj
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/business/farm-software-tries-to-make-its-mark-digital-domain.html
======
chimi
<http://farmlogs.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...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/news/economy/drought-crop-insurance/)

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.

~~~
abbasmehdi
Their design looks gorgeous _and_ serious to me. Maybe what I think does not
count because I'm not a farmer. They could A/B test this with a more
enterprise-y looking site, who knows.

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.

~~~
randomdata
I am a farmer and I think it is fine. Some of the interfaces I have seen for
farm-related software are hilariously bad. The big farms already log all this
information (and more) automatically, so it seems that the target market is
really smaller hobby farmers where a "fun" interface probably isn't so bad
anyway.

~~~
itmag
_I am a farmer_

This makes me curious. What brings you to HN? :)

~~~
randomdata
I wish I had some elaborate story for you, but I'm also a software developer.

~~~
itmag
Which career came first?

~~~
randomdata
I have been around the farm my whole life, but my first real job was doing
design/development/general IT work in high school. I've worked in software-
related roles ever since, primarily on the programming side. About four years
ago I established my own farming operation. It is still small, but I'm working
on slowly growing it.

~~~
itmag
How can I contact you? Email?

------
jameszol
My father-in-law is a small farmer running 2000-3000 acres each year,
depending on the year. My wife does the books for the family farm so I get to
hear quite a bit about what is going on per field, per crop, etc.

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:

<http://fdin.net/glossary.htm>

Good luck!

~~~
bmelton
I wonder if this isn't a case of competing standards?

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.

~~~
jameszol
Excellent point! I agree, I could be hearing only one of many standards and/or
the developers are using another.

------
troymc
I grew up on a grain farm in Saskatchewan. As far as I know, my farmer brother
and my dad still use paper and whiteboards to record this sort of information,
if they record it at all --- which is amazing because the machinery alone is
worth several million dollars.

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.

<http://www.myfarmshow.com/general/about>

------
hnriot
This is great, I'm so sick of seeing nothing but a plethora of useless stupid
games, the world has gone entertainment crazy, this is really a great
direction, I wish there were many many more useful apps, creative uses of the
mobile platform to do something other than entertain the masses.

------
jacques_chester
I wonder how this compares to Agworld?

<http://www.agworld.com.au/>

I've no relation to Agworld, except that they're based in the same city as I
am (Perth, Australia).

~~~
benbruscella
Glad to see some other Aussie sites mentioned here. We launched eGrowers out
of Deni last year, so this might just motivate us to run a second season.

------
jprice
I work in the dairy business, and I must say that a business like this is hit
or miss. Most farmers are old timers that still use pin paper for record
keeping. I know farmers that have built multi-million dollar dairy farms that
are computer automated and they still prefer a pen/paper. I wish the FarmLogs
crew the best of luck, but from my experience it's going to be a tough ride
for them.

------
jruppal
I demand a Venn Diagram.

~~~
vollmarj
[https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-aY4yLGeeNDY/UB22veANSoI/A...](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-aY4yLGeeNDY/UB22veANSoI/AAAAAAAABko/e805Mfelw6Y/w415-h220-n-k/venn_zoom_out_text.png)

------
jcarden
Congrats to Jesse and Brad. Way to go!

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artag
Congrats guys! I was curious, so I signed up for a free a/c. super easy to
use, and beautifully designed product!

------
savrajsingh
Would be happy to work with you guys to integrate farm energy use data into
this. (Wattvision.com YC W09)

------
radagaisus
Also relevant: <http://www.farmigo.com/>

~~~
will_work4tears
We have a local one: <http://www.terra-organics.com/>

~~~
ivanbernat
Also relevant, <http://farmeron.com> from Croatia.

------
abbottry
One of my favorite from W12, best of luck!

------
nikkidurkin
Congrats Jesse and Brad! Smashing it!

------
waxman
Congrats guys!

------
samstave
This is more than amazing [stream of conscious to follow]:

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...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-
your-world-talk-to-the-internet)

[2]
[http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Civilization_Starter_Kit_D...](http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Civilization_Starter_Kit_DVD_v0.01)

[3] [http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/doug-hornig/is-
bi...](http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/doug-hornig/is-big-data-the-
next-billion-dollar-technology-industry)

~~~
daeken
> This could be the only tool in fighting against massive congloms like
> Monsanto PLEASE NEVER SELL TO THEM - THEY WILL TRY TO DEVOUR YOU

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.

~~~
samstave
Totally disagree:

" _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.

~~~
mahmud
Straw-man much? You are mischaracterizing both the letter and the spirit of
what daeken said, framing a convenient caricature of it to say "hey look
everybody, I disagree with this mean badie".

Poor form.

~~~
samstave
Sorry but I don't think your analysis of this particular argument is on the
level...

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

~~~
mahmud
Farmlog is a web-based CRUD app. Monsanto is a billion dollar, multinational
behemoth. All daeken said was not to be afraid to sell out to big-agro if you
have a chance, take the money and run, be a martyr on your own damn time and
dime.

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.

