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Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

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Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#1
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but agriculture seems to be an overlooked industry in the startup world, even though there is a ton of opportunity there.

What are some startups who are solving tough agricultural problems? Who are some more established players?

I'm curious about any ag startups, especially those attempting to curb climate change through agriculture. For instance, new takes on outdoor farming techniques (like Indigo), indoor farming startups, folks working on agricultural hardware, machine learning, organic farming, folks developing apps to help farmers, distribution/sales/marketing, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#3
FBN was recently started in 2014 by 2 guys from the Silicon Valley area. So far, they focus on data analytics (e.g. seed yields).

There are various articles about them and youtube videos:

https://www.google.com/search?q=FBN+"farmers+business+networ...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fbn+farmers+bus...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oML9yLjTfk8

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#4
I'd recommend following AgFunder News: https://agfundernews.com (RSS, Twitter, whatever you like). I find that they cover the industry fairly well (or at least link to enough interesting things to get you a foothold). You're totally right that this is an overlooked industry, though make no mistake, many of the big players (your John Deeres and such) have very sophisticated R&D and engineering initiatives pursuing market opportunities in a variety of ag tech realms.

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#9
You need to look north:

https://www.farmersedge.ca/ ; precision farming, exited by Kleiner Perkins via sale to Prem Watsa of Fairfax Financial

https://seedotrun.com/ ; autonomous farming

https://www.seedmaster.ca ; precision farming

These companies actually have customers and / or are well on their way to commercialization

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