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An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

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Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#91

Post by jelliclesfarm »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #35
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #16

There is actually more to this than is visible on the surface. And I can’t talk about some of it. But here it is: 1. Climate Corp was part of Monsanto before it became Bayer. It was acquired by Monsanto. 2. John Deere wanted to buy Climate as well as Monsanto but that was struck down by US courts and Bayer bought Monsanto. 3. What was Climate Corp doing before? They had something called Field View where they charged…

Wow thanks for this info. What a shitty situation. Venture capitalists buying land to rent it back to farmers seems like the exact opposite of the kind of innovation we need. I work for a small farming automation company. I’m designing a solar powered weeding robot. when you say “small scale” farming what do you mean? Its still early for us but it feels like we need to target farms that are hundreds or thousands of a…

Thanks. I am interested in small acreage robotics to automate most of farming except harvest. Weeding is a very small part of growing food.

The reason Big Ag(not necessarily commodity Ag) is focused on giant weeding robots(for crops like potatoes, cotton, lettuce etc..those in the billion dollar club) is because the investment is coming from chemical inputs companies. It is very likely that the same pot of money going to finance Monsanto/Bayer is also funding Agtech and ag robotics because they are hedging their chemical industry investment. So if Ag stops using roundup, they’d use weeding robots and theair market share is protected.

Also why small scale food Ag is not dealt with right now. It’s too small a market and there is enough cheap labour and third world countries to import food from..maybe agtech will reach them eventually. But until then they won’t allow product cannibalisation. And if any small acreage Agtech or Ag robots become successful they will be bought out by the big investment firms or through smaller VCs and shelved. It will come out of its dark vault when the time feels right. We have the tech. It’s just not profitable to release it to farmers.

My goal is to automate everything with small robots and then scale by swarming them. I would love to connect. My email is my user name at gmail.

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#92

Post by jelliclesfarm »

jessaustin wrote: post #55
SequoiaHope wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow thanks for this info. What a shitty situation. Venture capitalists buying land to rent it back to farmers seems like the exact opposite of the kind of innovation we need. I work for a small farming automation company. I’m designing a solar powered weeding robot. when you say “small scale” farming what do you mean? Its still early for us but it feels like we need to target farms that are hundreds or thousands of a…

How could a robot keep more than a couple of acres weeded? Small amounts of acreage in real food would be more valuable to humans than vast tracts of frankenfood like Monsanto soybeans. There are already "at-scale" solutions for that crap: just spray it (and everything downwind!) with tons of noxious chemicals.

Small robots swarmed.

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#93

Post by jelliclesfarm »

TheMightyLlama wrote: post #32
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #16

There is actually more to this than is visible on the surface. And I can’t talk about some of it. But here it is: 1. Climate Corp was part of Monsanto before it became Bayer. It was acquired by Monsanto. 2. John Deere wanted to buy Climate as well as Monsanto but that was struck down by US courts and Bayer bought Monsanto. 3. What was Climate Corp doing before? They had something called Field View where they charged…

Data privacy is something that I think isn’t really covered here. Do the farming equipment companies share data? To be precise do the have the level of fidelity required to know information regarding the size of land when the equipment is in use as well as the toolset in the equipment? This might conceivably allow equipment companies to sell data to stock market companies who speculate on futures.

Yes. Data is the key. You can’t automate and employ AI without harvesting data. That’s one of the reasons all this is being consolidated. Farmers are too fragmented to act together to generate and provide data that Ag AI/ML needs. There is no need for privacy if the same companies that own and run Everything.

This is what happened with Monsanto. First it was round up and other weedicides. Then they said we will sell you the seeds that is round up ready. And then they convince farmers what to grow and what inputs and fertilizers to buy. And then what to grow and how to much to grow per season. And soon the same investment funds will own the land too.

https://www.farm-equipment.com/articles/14150-consolidation-... : this sums it up. It’s a tad dated and more consolidation has happened since.

[..] The five companies currently seeking to combine their business enterprises — Dow + Dupont, Bayer + Monsanto and Syngenta, which is to be acquired by ChemChina — together would hold a 78% stake in the ag chemicals segment of the industry. It could put them in a position to squeeze out the remaining competition.[..]

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#94

Post by jameslk »

rmason wrote: post #40

Long term the Tillable idea won't fly. I worked with farmers as a fertilizer company agronomist for twenty years. If I understand it correctly Tillable is trying to insert themselves in the middle, acquire the right to sublease large amounts of land and mark it up. Say you own a farm and lease it out. The family you lease your land to might be a neighbor. In the winter they might plow your driveway gratis. They add f…

Sounds like issues that can be mitigated with a review system? The land owner can submit ratings on how well the farmer took care of their land. Once it's all on a platform, they can quantify all these things, reducing the farmers down to a set of metrics. Obviously pretty dystopian but this is what I've seen it done on other marketplaces, such as Upwork.

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#95

Post by wjnc »

jdc wrote: post #85
wjnc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat for discussion purposes. Farmers make a profit, a farmer retiring can liquidate his assets by selling his land to a pension fund where in the olden days he 'needed a son', the lessee of the land usually wouldn't start farming there is there isn't a profit involved. The produce gets sold to a middle man and an end user, again for a profit. The company I work for is in finance (non-US) and has a pretty…

> Re the 'long game' discussion for finance and machinisation. The firm has literally been doing this for a few centuries so this hasn't been the original goal. I don't think it's come up yet as a current goal, although in all honesty I can see the appeal from a finance perspective. The farmer is the middleman we can cut out and replace by machines. First thought then is - what does it matter what the background of t…

I don't want to sound totally econofuturoptimistic, but No, it's not de-skilling in my book. I'd venture robotisation is actually re-skilling or up-skilling. Or in other words: the average education level of the employees after more and more capital flows in, goes up. And automisation / robotisation is nothing new in agriculture. You need a lot less labour, that's true. But that's the trend in agriculture for about 150 years (as far as I understand rice is one of the few crops that's pretty constant in hours per bushel). Modern day large farms are run by a handful of people (and an enormous supply chain on both sides). An example: The Netherlands is a substantial exporter of food, and farming is about 1.5% of GDP. That's astonishing.

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#96

Post by carapace »

kyle_morris_ wrote: post #5

I hope this doesn’t discourage farmers from using technology to improve efficiency, yields, profits, etc. I can’t imagine how tough it is to farm for your livelihood. The pressure on farmers must be brutal - from John Deere making it impossible to fix/own your own tractor[0] to climate change, and now your landlord might not renew your lease. At that point, why put so much effort into something with so little upside…

> improve efficiency, yields, profits

But those are already maximized to hell and back, to the detriment of the other crucial factors (e.g. Monarch Butterflies going extinct.)

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#97

Post by MattGaiser »

saalweachter wrote: post #79
derekbreden wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was close to my guess, the only small difference is I would add some maybe-ends-up-in-food-eventually crops as well. My family would refer to the roundup ready corn and soybeans we sold to the grain co-op as commodities, while the small sub-acreage of sweet corn grown to sell at the farmer’s market might be much more likely to be referred to as food. Food being a perhaps overly generous word for partially hydrog…

Commodity agriculture is any agriculture where the products are sold into the commodity markets, basically -- corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, pork, beef, etc. Commodity agriculture is all about scale and price; there are certain quality standards that must be met (your corn must have a specific moisture content; your pigs must weigh in a certain range and be free of disease) but there is no real competition on the quali…

> Commodity agriculture is all about scale and price; there are certain quality standards that must be met (your corn must have a specific moisture content; your pigs must weigh in a certain range and be free of disease) but there is no real competition on the quality of the good produced. You assume all hard red wheat is fungible, and buy and sell it by the ton.

Between regulations and grocery store standards, is that not basically all food?

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#98

Post by TeMPOraL »

randomdata wrote: post #89
luckylion wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently nobody turns to Tillable. It's Tillable that's turning to land owners and tries to convince them to not renew their contracts with farmers so Tillable can negotiate new contracts with higher prices, likely with the same farmers (as farming is very much a local thing, you can't farm a piece of land from a thousand miles away).

That only brings us back to the question of why landowners wouldn't go directly to the farmer and ask for the hypothetical $1,200 that Tillable would also ask of them? It is not exactly difficult to figure out who the farmers are in your local area, and it is especially not very difficult to figure out which ones are the hungry ones willing to pay top dollar, if that is your goal. Chances are they have already been h…

And that brings us back to my original answer: why would they? Trying to extract maximum profit from the counterparty is adversarial, whereas a relationship between a land owner and a neighbourhood farmer most likely is cooperative.

EDIT: for the same reason, I don't think Tillable has a chance of working, and to the extent it does, it's actively destructive.

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#99

Post by TaylorAlexander »

jessaustin wrote: post #55
SequoiaHope wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow thanks for this info. What a shitty situation. Venture capitalists buying land to rent it back to farmers seems like the exact opposite of the kind of innovation we need. I work for a small farming automation company. I’m designing a solar powered weeding robot. when you say “small scale” farming what do you mean? Its still early for us but it feels like we need to target farms that are hundreds or thousands of a…

How could a robot keep more than a couple of acres weeded? Small amounts of acreage in real food would be more valuable to humans than vast tracts of frankenfood like Monsanto soybeans. There are already "at-scale" solutions for that crap: just spray it (and everything downwind!) with tons of noxious chemicals.

The other commenter is correct - swarms.

Also our robot is capable of spraying but will primarily use mechanical means to destroy weeds so there is no chemical use.

Re: An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns

#100

Post by TaylorAlexander »

pas wrote: post #47
SequoiaHope wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow thanks for this info. What a shitty situation. Venture capitalists buying land to rent it back to farmers seems like the exact opposite of the kind of innovation we need. I work for a small farming automation company. I’m designing a solar powered weeding robot. when you say “small scale” farming what do you mean? Its still early for us but it feels like we need to target farms that are hundreds or thousands of a…

A bit off-topic, but I'm very interested in gaining an insight into what do you think what kind of innovation we need, and why?

It’s a good question! I’ll be honest - I’m a robotics engineer not a farmer. I’ve found that weeding is a good place to start according to the farmers I’ve spoken to. But the real innovations needed should come from a large group of users. That’s why I’m doing my best to ensure we can open source our machine. I’m inspired by the way open source 3D printers crowd sourced much of the innovation that got us where we are today (along with many dedicated companies which made their own improvements).
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