
Old McDonald had an app: FarmLogs lands $1M to modernize farm management - vollmarj
http://gigaom.com/2013/01/25/old-mcdonald-had-an-app-farmlogs-lands-1m-to-modernize-farm-management/
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ahelwer
Hah. My brother-in-law was talking to me about how much farmers would
appreciate software like this the Christmas before last. His family runs quite
the complicated operation, and farmers will surprise you with how cutting edge
they are technologically. If you search it there's a farmer who rigged up an
Arduino to drive his combine (autosteer systems can run into the tens of
thousands).

Edit: I just texted my brother-in-law asking about FarmLogs. He said he just
did a trial, it was pretty expensive. Now he's liking an app called "Farm at
Hand", he's met the main developer and talked with him over email. Personal
interaction seems to mean a LOT to farmers. Apparently the app is good and on
the right track but needs a bit of tweaking. Also Farm Credit Canada is
supposed to be coming out with an app soon that's going to be good at record
keeping.

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FarmAtHand
This is Himanshu one of the co-founders of Farm At Hand. We are constantly
working on improving existing features and adding new features. We appreciate
the feedback and are here to talk to our customers any time they would like.
As my co-founder is also a farmer she understands the importance of personal
interactions with our users. Feel free to contact me at any time. My email is
Himanshu(at)farmathand(dot)com

~~~
ahelwer
Sure! You might be the one my brother-in-law talked to. He says he met you at
Manitoba Ag Days. Were you there?

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FarmAtHand
I definitely was. It was a great trade show. Please let your brother-in-law
(and anyone else) know that we are always looking to speak with farmers. We're
always look to learn about what new feature might make their work easier. Feel
free to contact me at any time!

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polemic
Modern farms are high tech operations run by highly knowledgeable experts. In
fact, the line in the article "...while farming might seem like an odd place
for tech investment.." is laughable. Many farmers in New Zealand, for example,
have android tablets in their tractors feeding their GPS coordinates back to
base, and giving them live information about rainfall for that paddock, etc.
Every cow's hereditary is tracked, and individuals that produce interesting
variants of milk are tested and studied.

So, the problem with the SaaS model is that selling to farmers is a lot like
selling to a demanding enterprise customer. They know what they want, they
have specific requirements and the benefits of a well-matched solution will
pay for itself. That isn't, generally, where you want to be if you're looking
to scale out a SaaS platform.

Be interesting to see how it goes.

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rogerbinns
Farmers in New Zealand have the advantage of clear transparent markets. In the
US and EU markets are severely distorted due to subsidies and related
regulations.

[http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/new-zealand-
farm...](http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/new-zealand-farmers-dont-
want-subsidies)

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jacques_chester
This is a good solid niche to work in. Especially since, by creating a shared
supply chain, you can tap into network effects to create barriers to entry.

In Australia I know people who are working on a similar product --
Agworld.com.au.

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protomyth
The article has a bit of a misstatement about Cargill and its cohorts in
regards to this type of technology. They are actively selling this support to
farms of all sizes and have been for years. I wish these folks luck, but they
are competing against some of the biggest companies in the world who have been
pushing this tech for awhile.

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vollmarj
You are absolutely right that the article is incorrect about Cargill and ADM.
Those companies don't actually grow the crops themselves, but rather they buy
them from the farmers (big and small). We (FarmLogs) have happy customers of
all sizes from some of the biggest farms in the country to very tiny
operations. Even though some of the big ag companies do have some limited
software for farms, there is still plenty of room for innovation that only a
startup can deliver.

~~~
randomdata
In Canada, as I'm sure you are aware, the government owned FCC offers software
to farmers[1] that seems to attempt to solve many of the same problems your
software does. Do you feel it will be difficult to compete in this market,
assuming you wish to expand internationally, given their market position?

As a farmer and software developer myself, it is great to see some startups in
this space. I'm quite interested to see where you take the company.

[1] <http://www.fccsoftware.ca/en/index.asp>

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kochb
Thank you to all of you commenters from the FarmLogs team! Your feedback helps
give us a glimpse of things we haven't learned yet, and it encourages us when
you bring up things we're already using to our advantage.

PS - We're hiring an awesome front end dev, and mobile, if you'd like to join.

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smoyer
While FarmLogs may have unique selling points, there's already a lot of
software targeted at farmers ... I can think of two in my local area:

\- <http://www.agintegrated.com/>

\- <http://www.zedxinc.com/>

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jcarden
Awesome job guys. Way to go.

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mvip
Great job Jesse et al.!

