
Ask HN: Is an AgTech University an Investable Venture? - jelliclesfarm
In points:<p>1. I am a small farmer interested in automation for 5 something years now. 
2. I am having difficulty convincing both farmers as well as investors to get interested. Mostly lack of trust(and lots of click bait ‘farm robots’ online even before MVP is out. Credibility and trust problem)<p>3. There is an opportunity to lease several hundred acres of Ag zones land in the Bay Area.<p>4. Universities publish papers but do very little to actually innovate.<p>5. I want an Ag tech school or Ag Tech 2 year college where a new breed of future farmers can be trained in fields other than agronomy to figure out how we will change the farming paradigm.<p>6. Is this an investable venture?<p>7. All thoughts, ideas, observations will be appreciated.
======
PaulHoule
My take.

Universities do a better job of tech transfer in agriculture than they do
anywhere else. Cornell has innovated with everything from wine grapes,
barbecue sauce, and free literature for researchers in third world countries.
The endowed schools at Cornell are excellent, but the ag school and vet school
rock the world. The agricultural extension office is taking it to the streets
in 50+ counties in the U.S. but other researchers are doing things elsewhere
in the world.

Compare that to the computer science department where you see PhD students who
are about to give their job talks at CMU, Stanford, Google, Facebook and...
that's about it.

Is the bay area really right for this? I don't know. It seems to me that
somewhere in the Fresno direction you could find people who are 100% serious
about agriculture but still have some access to Bay Area robotics expertise,
assuming that is what you are going after.

I think of this marketing success story:

[https://www.lely.com/us/solutions/milking/](https://www.lely.com/us/solutions/milking/)

These machines are being installed in dairies everywhere because farmers
recognize the value.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
We have UC in California too. And yet we lag behind other countries in Ag tech
and Ag automation.

In California, we are so attached to the teat of cheap manual ..often
migrant..labour. We have 45-50 billion dollars in revenue so our Ag is an
industry. It’s like a factory industrial complex. And yet, without cheap
labour, the thin margins would become thinner. Worse, if that labour is cut
off, we can’t replace it with other manual labour because no one wants their
kids to work in farms.

New farmers need new tech they are familiar with and there are no new farmers
learning new tech.

This is my observation and that’s why I feel the need for Ag tech
universities. Focusing on AI and automation...which means robotics, not
drones. Predictive systems and not sensors that tell us how much inches of
rain was accumulated or something like that.

