[rmason]

The number of farmers is essentially meaningless because of the way the USDA counts who is a farmer. Anyone with sales of over $1000 per year is considered a farmer and that is how they get the 2 million farmers number.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-w...

What is more meaningful is to look at farms with sales of $250,000 per year or more. They're 9% of farms but account for 80% of sales. There are roughly 125,000 farms in this group.

[timlin]

Sure, you're making my point exactly. The soundbite "5% of farms in the US are using Farmlogs" sounds impressive doesn't really mean much without further qualification. In fact, I find it misleading. So did you, evidently.

There are two (at least) different definitions of "farm." One is large commercial business often utilizing a thousand acres or more. I suppose these are FarmLogs' focus?

The other is family-operated (except for seasonal help perhaps), typically less than 250 acres. I live in Lancaster County, PA where farms average 78 acres. The farm I live on (and operate) is ~50 acres and has crop & animal revenue far less than $100k. But it's still a viable farm.

Average revenue per farm in Lancaster County is $183k. That's another almost meaningless number without knowing the distribution. I'd guess 10% of the farms I know are much more than $250k.

http://www.lancasterfarmlandtrust.org/heritage/farming-lanca...

[rmason]

Without their qualifying where the 5% figure comes from it is useless conjecture.

If you're talking farms with over a million dollars in sales per year (around 40,000) then having 2000 farms using FarmLogs is highly significant.

Either way very proud of this Michigan startup's success to date.

[reustle]

Hey Lancaster county, Berks county here. I'd love to hear about how much tech you use on your farm, and if you're active in moving to use more. Are you a generally tech minded person? A developer?

[johne20]

The key word missing from the article is "row"... "5% of US row crop farms". https://twitter.com/paulg/status/423532157277974528

[randomdata]

It looks like there are around 400,000 row crop farmers in the US. 20,000 users, plus who knows how many worldwide, is quite impressive given the nature of the business. I do wonder how they are driving so much traffic? As a farmer myself, I've never heard of the service outside of HN circles.