
Firms That Bossed Agriculture for a Century Face New Threat: Farmers - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/firms-that-bossed-agriculture-for-a-century-face-new-threat-farmers-1534347514
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russnewcomer
I worked for a company that has been in the tech side of this space since 2004
until acquisition last year. You'll notice that the discussion in this article
(which seems to be submarine PR for Cargill) talks about Cargill and ADM's
relationship with the farmers. There are a lot of smaller elevators and coops
out there that are working to help farmers capitalize on the increased flow of
information while maintaining their ability to stay open against corporate
competition from the ABC giants (ADM, Bunge, Cargill).

The big thing in the overall space is that the software side of ag lags behind
profitability in the industry. The company I worked for was 6 people (fte 3
devs), and we were running on a .NET WebForms platform originally written in
2005 that we didn't have the time or resources to bring nearly 250kloc to
something more modern. (That includes web, backend processes, api, our mobile
app platform was another 40kloc)

Hopefully, modern web/big data/etc tech allows small farmers to move past
occasional profitability to thriving growth, not just allows big companies to
capture more profits.

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nhorob67
I'm the founder of a company called Harvest Profit. We build a suite of
profitability and risk management tools, trying to help farmers better manage
their operations.

Farming is a unique business where the average farm generates $1+ million of
revenue and is self-managed.

I agree with this article. More farmers are taking on the duties of
merchandising their commodities and we help them with that. It's a fun
challenge.

As an aside, selling intangible goods like software to farmers (who love
equipment) is not for the faint of heart!

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russnewcomer
I've actually seen your product, as the Myriad, the company that acquired my
previous employer is based in the same city as you. I think your product looks
great, and I hope you do well. I'm all for products that help local farmers
make good profits!

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nhorob67
Thanks Russ! Hopefully we will get the opportunity to collaborate!

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rmason
There's a huge margin out there for both farmers and suppliers if they can
bypass the middleman. Did you know that grain shipped overseas contains up to
5% foreign matter? That farmers are docked if they bring in grain with over
0.5% foreign matter?

I held out the idea that the blockchain would be useful as a tool to let
suppliers in Europe or China deal with large farms or groups of farms but it
hasn't happened so far.

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swerveonem
What services do the middlemen provide? Are those services truly unneeded or
will the farmer have to develop those skills and/or outsource to a different
company? It seems like there is an opportunity here when viewed through
traditional product distribution eyes but can a farmer ship direct to
customer, organize bonds and insurance, navigate the futures markets?

~~~
Growing
Perhaps a co-operative owned by the farmers themselves would be the best
approach

