[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.

[dejv]

Most of the software on market is basically data collecting apps (be it manual or automatic data entry). What you get out of those apps is just another piece of (already abundant) information. You might get good insights out of it, but most farms are seriously understaffed and there might not be enough time left for doing another data entry job or analysing it.