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Comment by timlin | Hacker News Reader

I live on a small farm and know quite a few farmers socially. The 5% number seems hard to believe.

According to Wikipedia[1], there were 2.2 million farms in 2007. Since the number of farms is decreasing (land development, consolidation, etc), let's say today there are only 2 million. At 5%, that's 100k farms on FarmLogs. That's impressive. I wonder how many of them are paying customers?

Especially given that most farmers I know are older (think Baby Boomer age) and are barely competent using the Internet never mind an app/SAAS like this.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat...

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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.

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...

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.

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?

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

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.

You must know a different crowd of farmers than I do. The ones I know understand tech and are using it[1]. GPS and custom spreadsheets are the basics.

1) the ones who didn't aren't farming anymore

It says 5% of "farms" ; is that farmers, farms, farm hands?

The farming automation stuff happening now is fascinating. I saw a piece on Bloomberg or somewhere similar that had old farmers just sitting in a room monitoring their equipment on computers.

Edit: another note in terms of "old" people using computers -- the guys that are in their 70s now were in their late 30s and 40s when the IBM PC was released in 1981.

I think the abilities of the 65+ market are under estimated both by younger people and the older people themselves. Modern interfaces just tend to be designed very poorly for people who poorer eye sight, hearing, and so on.

> the guys that are in their 70s now were in their late 30s and 40s when the IBM PC was released in 1981.

And they were using them back then then too. Growing up in the early 80s on a farm, I don't remember any farming families that didn't have a computer in the home. It was an essential tool.

It's probably some combination of people downloading the app and signing up for the free service. It is most likely not a reflection of how people use the app on a regular basis or pay for the service.

Good luck, guys. It's a tough row to hoe considering all of the major agricultural machine manufacturers (Case, Deere, etc.) have some variation of this service coupled with world-wide dealer networks to sell it. If you think you're going to be able to wedge yourself between farmers and the dealers that they have been dealing with for years and in some cases generations, best of luck with that.

Interesting idea, but the best they can hope for is a talent acquisition buy-out.

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