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Comment by abetusk | Hacker News Reader

Presumably the submitter of this link is also the author?

Do you have any suggestions on what areas are good for innovation?

I also find myself at a complete loss for what technologies are actually out there, how they're used and what a typical farm looks like and how it operates. Even the data of "90M acres of corn, 85M acres of soybean, and 30M acres of wheat" is complete news to me.

What are some sources to get at this data, to get a feel for what this system looks like?

I know that the "global village construction set" [1] was marketed as trying trying to solve some of these issues but I'm not sure it really developed into anything actionable.

Keep up the good work, I'd like to see more writing. Do you have any suggestions on other blogs that talk about similar subject matter?

[1] https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/

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Umm...start with USDA NASS for agriculture statistics in the US. agfundernews.com for the startup scene. Just reseach in general. Deep Learning, Nanotechnology, Drones (UAVs), genetic engineering all have a home in agriculture. I'd be happy to PM you more resources.

Yeah USDA NASS is the spot for your ag statistics. even then NASS is not 100% accurate but pretty solid. Drones, meh. nobody wants pictures of their farm bud. What do you do with pictures of your farm? Nothing. I've been working with farmers for 6+ years and only a handful of them like the drones mostly because it's a fun toy. Sure tell me that you can get AI imagery and machine learning non-sense from your farm pictures.

The only thing i agree with you on is genetic engineering. And that is not startup space really. That is like giant bio-tech companies breeding corn seeds in a lab. You need a phD for that shit you dont just build a startup that 'disrupts' seed genetics.

Free idea: There is MASSIVE distrust in the NASS right now in the farming community to the point of the data becoming questionable. It'd be nice if place like Indigo Ag (which acquired TellusLabs I believe) could assist/takeover some of the things remote sensing or satellites can do (like planted acres) so that USDA NASS doesn't need to rely on unpopular and time consuming surveys

Where can I find the communities that are upset/distrust NASS? Is this on twitter/forums/fb? I'd like to take a deeper look into the problems they're discussing but I'm an outsider, not sure where to begin looking.

One problem is that farmers often consider it a secret they don't want to share. For good reason, if you know how much crops will produce next fall you can go to commody markets and make a lot of money. That money comes out of the farmers potential profit in some cases as they are playing the other side of the trade and so the less you know compared to them, the better the deal they can get.

Farmers know what is in their fields, but prices are affected by fields on other continents which the farmer doesn't know. Any information the farmer can get but you cannot is to his advantage. (this applies to all farmers, they need to know what happens in Ukraine, Brazil, Australia... But they need you to not know)

Very late reply...But if you want to hear an admitedly biased (towards negative) source, go read the crop comments on agweb.com

Not affiliated with them, but there's a startup in New England that sounds like they've gotten pretty good results and feedback using drones. I think they use hyperspectral sensors find things like areas that are under/over-watered or that are running out of nitrogen, etc. The whole things is supposedly automatic, so you don't even need someone directly piloting the thing.

I know that there's been some success in remote sensing of aquaculture at the academic level that's also demonstrated some promise with drones.

[1] https://www.american-robotics.com/

A note on genetic engineering: a relatively new tool called CRISPR is changing the field. A grad student with a few hundred dollars is now capable of inserting, removing, or modifying specific genes in the entire genome. It's becoming relatively trivial to make Frankenstein plants.

Check my Bio. I'm familiar with big bio-tech companies that breed corn, :)

VERY familiar, lol.

Saw a drone they were using at a farm in North Dakota. It was definitely big enough to need an FAA license. They were damn enthusiastic about it, I get the feeling a couple of them chipped in for it.

If the incumbents keep acting like the backside of a donkey, a new generation of repairable farm machines would probably work but need a lot of capital and damn good relationships with local dealers.

To your first point, a fair number of drone "service companies" have gotten going in the state, so owning your own isn't completely necessary. If you want to sell to those companies (and the farmers they serve), developing new sensors and/or analytics to back them up is one way to get into that space.

To add, if you are a tech person study the combines following the harvest from south to north. That will lead you to so many aspects of what modern farming in the great plains is and probably give you some ideas for tech services that farmers would be willing to pay for.

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