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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
Could you go into those reasons?
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. I…
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 coordina…
#2 - I don't know if there's a distinction there. Either the value is lower (because the data doesn't include anyone outside the association) or dollars just flow in a different way (e.g., increased association dues for increased "free" services vs. fee-for-service).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. I…
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 coordina…
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.
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…
The parent article totally ignores the major farming organizations.
[1] http://www.fb.org/issues/bigdata/ [2] http://www.fb.org/agdatatransparent/
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…
Look at Quantified Ag, making fit bits for cows. http://quantifiedag.com/ Groundbreaking stuff, which came about from a simple discussion. It seems boring on the surface, but there's some cool stuff going on in the sector.
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 o…
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?"
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.