<a href="http://farmlogs.com/" rel="nofollow">http://farmlogs.com/</a><p>I'm all for this. It's a field I've considered many times. I'm an urban homesteader and programmer, so I see the value. I want you to succeed. Please understand my criticism is meant only to further your progress. I love what you're doing.<p>My concern is that your product looks like a toy. Farmers are serious about their work. They aren't playing a Zynga game or... Agricola. That farm equipment costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Farmers across the nation have lost $20 Billion worth of crops this summer. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/news/economy/drought-crop-insurance/" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/news/economy/drought-crop-in...</a><p>Please, get a more sophisticated look. Let farmers know you are serious. If I could look at your website and believe you are serious, I may not need someone else to tell me you are serious.
My father-in-law is a small farmer running 2000-3000 acres each year, depending on the year. My wife does the books for the family farm so I get to hear quite a bit about what is going on per field, per crop, etc.<p>I signed up for the trial to see what it was like. The UI is very simple and looks easy to use. The only thing that I might recommend is that you look into standardized farm management taxonomy.<p>Serious farmers will go take classes on how to scale and run profitable farms. Most of these classes teach them to separate tasks/costs into Enterprises and Overheads per field or other terms that I am personally not too familiar with. It looks like you're heading the right direction, I just didn't see a lot of the terms I hear thrown around when talking with my wife or father-in-law. They have both sat in on classes that I described above although they are farmers - they will do and say things their own way, class or not.<p>Here's a Farm Management Glossary that looks pretty decent. Perhaps you can start here and compare your software's definitions with these:<p><a href="http://fdin.net/glossary.htm" rel="nofollow">http://fdin.net/glossary.htm</a><p>Good luck!
I grew up on a grain farm in Saskatchewan. As far as I know, my farmer brother and my dad still use paper and whiteboards to record this sort of information, if they record it at all --- which is amazing because the machinery alone is worth several million dollars.<p>They do use GPS in the tractors, mostly to minimize overlap/gaps. They used a big paper ledger to do bookkeeping until my brother took over the bookkeeping, and I think he now uses Quicken (not QuickBooks). The farm is a strange mix of low tech and high tech, and I suspect that's not unusual.<p>If you want to advertise to grain farmers in Western Canada, then one good way is to buy an ad in The Western Producer (a newspaper). Agricultural trade shows are probably a better bet though. I know they go to the Farm Progress Show every year.<p><a href="http://www.myfarmshow.com/general/about" rel="nofollow">http://www.myfarmshow.com/general/about</a>
This is great, I'm so sick of seeing nothing but a plethora of useless stupid games, the world has gone entertainment crazy, this is really a great direction, I wish there were many many more useful apps, creative uses of the mobile platform to do something other than entertain the masses.
I wonder how this compares to Agworld?<p><a href="http://www.agworld.com.au/" rel="nofollow">http://www.agworld.com.au/</a><p>I've no relation to Agworld, except that they're based in the same city as I am (Perth, Australia).
I work in the dairy business, and I must say that a business like this is hit or miss. Most farmers are old timers that still use pin paper for record keeping. I know farmers that have built multi-million dollar dairy farms that are computer automated and they still prefer a pen/paper. I wish the FarmLogs crew the best of luck, but from my experience it's going to be a tough ride for them.
This is more than amazing [stream of conscious to follow]:<p>This could be the only tool in fighting against massive congloms like Monsanto PLEASE NEVER SELL TO THEM - THEY WILL TRY TO DEVOUR YOU<p>FarmLogs could be used to actually teach ANYONE how to farm efficiently.<p>You take the data that each farmer uses to track their crop and harvest and teach people how to do the same.<p>You will need to incorporate sensors into the system, such as the TWINE SENSOR [1] into your system -- track the weather and moisture for every location, as well as the crop.<p>You can build a DB of the yields over time for any given farm. Use this to inform people of the best times and conditions to plant various crops.<p>You can track man-power-hours to yields as well and be able to help people understand that if they want to grow X amount of Y crop, they need Z people and Z1 hours...<p>Finally, the most obvious, is cost - you can then say that for a property of X size, you need Y labor and Z dollars to produce Z1 crop!<p>Seriously - alongside fake meat - if you have an APP that can actually TRAIN a farmer, this is farking planet changing.<p>Use this info to build out a tutorial to train 3rd world people to micro-farm with HIGH yields.<p>There was this articla about big-data being the next billion dollar industry: big farm data will be the trillion dollar industry. NEVER SELL OUT TO MONSANTO. NEVER.<p>Ultimately:<p>Build an app that asks me what my resources and interests are, and help me build a farm that suits my capabilities: If i have an apartment in seatlle with a balcony of 200 square feet and $50 per month to apply to that square footage, what can I grow.<p>Knowing what the cost per squarefoot to yield is for massive famrs will allow such an engine to be built.<p>Every single person on the planet should be able to access this app - enter their capabilities and determine how much they could produce to either sustain themselves or sell to the local market.<p>This is revolutionary. If you can build this into an app that is stand alone, it should be married to the open-source civ kit [2]<p>Look at big data as the future - this is the biggest (most important) data.. [3]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-li...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Civilization_Starter_Kit_DVD_v0.01" rel="nofollow">http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Civilization_Starter_Kit_D...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/doug-hornig/is-big-data-the-next-billion-dollar-technology-industry" rel="nofollow">http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/doug-hornig/is-bi...</a>