

How can we disrupt the agricultural industry with tech? - hoonbae

Does anybody have any ideas or recommendation on ways tech can improve the agricultural industry (i.e. food production, marketing, distribution, etc)? Are there any startups out there doing something pertaining to agriculture? I feel like there's a lot of potential in tapping into Agriculture 2.0.
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brudgers
I have in-laws who work for rural phone co-ops in northern Iowa. Back in the
late 1990's they were laying fiber-optic everywhere because of the bandwidth
farmers were willing to pay for...particularly the hog farms which were
largely automated.

And that's nothing compared to the level of genetic technology and associated
startups involved with agriculture.

I'm sorry but the idea that we are at Agriculture 2.0 only suggests a lack of
familiarity with the contemporary agriculture industries and a lack of
historical perspective.

[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_revolution>]

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euroclydon
I think anything that brings value up the market will benefit consumers. Let
me quote from Mark Mills of Forbes, where he explains that, although a tiny
fraction of a percent of the U.S. population works in agriculture today versus
100 years ago, much of that population is now involved in food preparation.

 _Roughly a century ago when America had fewer than 100 million citizens,
nearly 12 million worked on farms, a number that then comprised over 40
percent of the entire labor force. Now barely three million people call
themselves farmers, accounting for a shade over two percent of today’s
workforce. Meanwhile, technology enabled a 600 percent growth in agricultural
output.

Both in absolute and relative terms technology blew the lid off agricultural
productivity, and crushed direct farm employment. But, over that same century,
somehow the American economy managed to generate enough wealth to create jobs
for more than 100 million more workers.

Most of the new employment over the past century came from new services and
new products that didn’t exist in 1900 – airlines and computing to name only
two examples. It is worth noting that a lot of the new employment actually
came from the same industry, food, as farming. It’s just that we count the
jobs differently. While barely two percent of the modern American workforce is
in farming, over 15 percent work in the food industry._

What is the next step beyond food service?

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dpatru
A site that connects growers with eaters, especially in dense areas. It's very
easy to grow much more than you need in a garden, but it's not so easy to sell
the surplusage.

I can buy vegetables and fruit at the store but it's not just-picked fresh.
Why couldn't I buy right off the plant from a neighbor a few minutes' walk
away?

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Tcepsa
Unfortunately, I believe that many places have laws (e.g. food safety
regulations) that ban such informal growing and selling.

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oregonspanish
\--VC-type or incubator funding (there are only a few) for agricultural
startups \--Social sites promoting education in agriculture--countries like
Chile hold agriculture up as a profession on par with medicine and law \--Full
chain product based startups (see POM Wonderful) that manage genetic
improvements through breeding, growing, sales and distribution of a novel food
product.

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TheRealmccoy
Reverse the entire "Deal" process. Let the Farmer put the deals on its produce
and auction its produce to the best bidder.

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JoeBloggsFarmer
Have a look at this approach for Open Source Hardware for the agricultural
sector.

[http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...](http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set)

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ig1
<http://www.farmeron.com/>

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feydr
in all seriousness, stop subsidizing it and let the market deal with it

