
The land grab for farm data - fanquake
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/06/the-land-grab-for-farm-data/
======
emcrazyone
I'm the lead software architect at a major agricultural and construction
equipment manufacturer. I deal with this stuff every day.

I'm not aware of any efforts to make collected data available but what I can
say about the company I work for is that we largely view the data the farmer
or operator's personal property. We don't transmit it back to any data center
presently but we do have ways to copy the captured data off to a USB stick for
post processing which a number of 3rd party precision farming applications are
on the market to read it.

What I can say about the data is that it's voluminous. Our software collect
all kinds of data besides just precision farming data. For example, CAN bus
faults, GPS history (vehicle guidance), weather conditions (temperature,
humidity), etc... And the way the data is collected follows no industry set
standard - it's pretty much proprietary formats.

Also, much of our data collection is stored locally in a binary format to save
space and improve performance. We have tools that move the data back to a flat
file/text format for post processing.

I'm not involved with the 3rd parties that use the data but my guess is that
someone has shared with them the formats and such.

~~~
microDude
Yes, this is a common problem to all industries. Formats can be figured out or
obtained from the OEM, then a gateway is created to transform into a
digestible format (my guess some XML schema). In the article, the author
states his company [1], where in the tech section he describes this very
scenario.

[1][https://www.farmobile.com](https://www.farmobile.com)

~~~
MisterBastahrd
I've dealt with something similar, working for a small publisher in niche
markets. We've got dozens of customers, some on third party platforms, and
others with their own proprietary data formats. I built a platform to convert
their data to our own format. Usually that part is easy. Mapping their
categorization to our own is the time-consuming part.

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cjf4
>Farm data is expected to be a $20–$25 billion revenue opportunity, but we
haven’t yet determined how the data can be collected, structured, stored and
shared, let alone monetized.

For crying out loud...

~~~
rayuela
That was really funny to read. "We have no idea how money will be made off
this data, but it's going to be around $20-25 billion/year" rofl

~~~
jomamaxx
Silicon Valley = Pied Piper :)

~~~
ben_jones
To be fair the potential for reduced bandwidth usage by Pied Piper users could
add up to billions of dollars alone.

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HillaryBriss
> Farmers tell me, “Look, I know that my data has value because everyone wants
> it. The part that frustrates me is that companies want my data in return for
> some undefined ‘value.’ Meanwhile they are often upselling me for additional
> services that would not exist without my data."

Sounds like a good description of what's been going on across the economy for
20 years. Farmers are asking the same question many others are asking: how can
I keep more of my own data's value for myself?

~~~
basseq
Two thoughts:

1\. This is tough, because the value of a single _data point_ ("my data") is
pretty much zero. The value is in the aggregate. Of course, without any data
points, the value of the data is then zero. So the sum of the value of the
individual data points does not equal the value of the data as a whole.

2\. There's value to you in _my ability to sell you more things_. Which sounds
nonsensical, but hear me out. If I'm able to sell you, it means you see value
in that product or service greater than its cost. _I would not be able to
create that value for you without your data._ So it's a help-me-help-you
situation.

~~~
otoburb
For #1, I'd imagine that farmers already belong to (or could form?) a farming
or agriculture association, and one of the [additional] responsibilities could
be data collection, anonymizing and selling to other parties. The association,
similar to a labour union, could also potentially hire a 3rd party to do this
work on their behalf provided they still retain ownership over the data, but
at least the overall coordination and aggregate value would be captured on
behalf of the farmers and not the vendors.

#2 would be fulfilled more easily by the association provided there was enough
true representation of member interests and concerns.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, but neither the farmer or agriculture association are capable to
actually collect the data - the data is generated as a byproduct when all
kinds of systems do work on the farmer's fields, but it is generated by and
within all these third party systems.

Aggregation and cleaning up of all that heterogenous data would be even
harder, and _that_ is definitely not the task for anyone who doesn't make
their core business (I mean, none of the involved big companies is able to do
that yet) creating and maintaining that capability can be practically done by
a couple competitors worldwide, but not by every regional association
duplicating the effort.

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microDude
Idea: Co-Op program

Farmers join a local Co-Op, say "Iowa's Data Co-Op". The Data Co-Op then sells
to the highest bidder, then after a small management fee returns dividends to
the participating farmers.

The Data Co-Op partners with equipment integrators to build data collection
devices and data transformations.

~~~
fanquake
Local farmer groups are already a thing, where farmers get together to share
research, look at properties with trials running on them etc. [1]

The question your have to answer before trying to sell any of this "info", is
who, other than the farmers themselves is going to find it valuable enough to
buy?

[1] [http://gga.org.au/group/northern-agri-
group/](http://gga.org.au/group/northern-agri-group/)

------
Animats
And here's what the American Farm Bureau Federation is doing about it.[1] See
their Ag Data Transparency Evaluator.[2]

The parent article totally ignores the major farming organizations.

[1] [http://www.fb.org/issues/bigdata/](http://www.fb.org/issues/bigdata/) [2]
[http://www.fb.org/agdatatransparent/](http://www.fb.org/agdatatransparent/)

------
blahi
AG are the original data science folks. SAS was started to help farmers
analyze crops 40 or so years ago.

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Kluny
I could see myself dedicating my life to making software to help farmers
organize their farm data and sell it. Anyone know of companies that do this?

 __edit: I 'm a full-stack application developer with a lot of experience
working with non-techy business owners and proven success as a problem-solver.
I'm interested in getting into this industry as a technical project manager.
Email me if you're looking for such a person (it's in my profile). I'll be in
contact with the companies in the comments below, too. Thanks!

~~~
MAGZine
Yes, FarmersEdge (disclosure: I know the CTO) is a big player. I think, in a
roundabout way, Monsanto is one of their competitors through acquisitions,
though I'm not sure of their market placement wrt FE.

I think ag is an underrated software industry. It's ripe for disruption, but
you need to do it in a way that makes sense to farmers, which can be tricky
for at least a couple of reasons!

~~~
infinite8s
Could you go into those reasons?

~~~
dbcurtis
It is a commodity business with very thin margins. Farmers for the most part
have zero pricing power for their commodities. Whatever you propose must
"pencil out", as farmers say, and it needs to be a clear benefit. It should
reduce or option-away risk, not add to risk.

Professional farm management companies might be a good place to start, because
they have business analysts that have the time to understand your product and
can deploy at scale across multiple clients.

Hertz farm management (Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska) is one example. Typical
client is the children that inherited dad's farm but don't have the time and
expertise to manage the land, which is typically leased to farmer-operators.

------
schmichael
Precision Planting HQ is 2 corn fields away (~5 miles) from the house I grew
up in in rural Illinois. Maybe I shouldn't have moved to the west coast to
chase startups...

~~~
jpbedoya
Check out climate.com We are building the tools for farmers to use all these
data. We have offices in SF, Seattle, Chicago and St Louis if you are
interested.

~~~
schmichael
And Morton, IL! About 15 miles from Precision Planting.

------
fanquake
What I think is going to be most interesting is companies/banks/insurances
agencies being able to gleam information without going through the farmers at
all. Not by subverting them and going to the machinery manufacturers, which is
already happening, but just by using other sources of information, such as
satellite imagery.

It's already possible to predict yield potential through biomass/NDVI
monitoring via satellite, and given that imagery from a source such as LandSat
is freely available, or something like Planet isn't that expensive once your a
bank/insurance agency I'm certain they must already be using.

Once you can predict yields reliably via satellite, you can start to predict
supply for certain types of grain in different regions, or to a lesser extent,
countries as a whole. This data is useful to investment banks and insurers, as
well as organisations such as CBH[1], that handle the entirety of Western
Australia's grain export. They currently determine potential yield by sending
out a grower survey, and asking the farmers to predict yields themselves.

I think the idea of anyone "stealing" our data is overrated. The data from our
farm[2] is specific to our farm, and as long as where not farming in such a
way that is detrimental to our partners (such as banks/suppliers), such that
we were trying to lie about yield potential, or resource usage, I'm not sure
what value could be stolen by anyone with our info. In fact we openly share
all the trial work we do, so that everyone in the community can learn and
benefit.

[1] [https://www.cbh.com.au/](https://www.cbh.com.au/) [2]
[https://hectare.ag/nook](https://hectare.ag/nook)

------
vasaulys
This seems to confirm just how important the price of data is for ML & AI
based startups. Methinks there is a market alone for data companies, not even
those that are necessarily doing anything productive with said data, just
collecting it.

Also raises the question of whether its possible to bootstrap a data science,
ML, or AI startup, given the high expense of purchasing that data.

~~~
unsettledtck
There is actually a thriving industry in data collection and these range from
companies that provide tools for you to do your own data collection and those
who will collect the data for you (or provide pre-made datasets). Full
disclosure, I work for one such: Scrapinghub where we provide tools, platform,
and data services.

------
JoeAltmaier
I'm not sure the farmer should be getting in the way of data collection.
Regional and global optimizations can be mined from a large enough set of ag
data. Do we really want to nickel and dime research this way? Its a fair
question.

I know; there's a sense of ownership. But farmers are just one participant in
the chain of data management. They just happen to be the one person residing
physically over the land. So they could charge rent on data. But should they?

~~~
weberc2
The point is that everyone except farmers are profiting from the data the
farmers are helping to collect. Perhaps the better question is "why should
everyone _except_ farmers get to nickel and dime research in this way?"

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I didn't read that. I read that no money was changing hands; just agreements.
And of course the farmers benefit greatly; that's the whole point of it all,
to make better yields.

~~~
weberc2
Why do you think increasing yields greatly benefits farmers? If the pencil
industry doubles its output, do you imagine their profits will increase
twofold?

~~~
costcopizza
Note he said better rather than increase.

Better could mean anything from maintaining current output with less costs to
increasing the quality of your crop.

~~~
weberc2
The phrase "better yields" is exactly synonymous with "increased yields". A
crop's yield is its volume, measured in bushels. There is literally no other
way to interpret this.

Citation: I grew up on a farm, and my family has farmed for at least 200
years.

EDIT: This is a particularly weird reason to downvote me...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And that'd be pedantic. Better can be more cost-effective, cheaper in time or
money or equipment or quality of land required. I grew up on a farm, live on
one now, my family has farmed for 300 years, so I guess I win?

~~~
weberc2
You seem to think you're disagreeing with me, but everything you said is
consistent with my description.

