Hah. My brother-in-law was talking to me about how much farmers would appreciate software like this the Christmas before last. His family runs quite the complicated operation, and farmers will surprise you with how cutting edge they are technologically. If you search it there's a farmer who rigged up an Arduino to drive his combine (autosteer systems can run into the tens of thousands).<p>Edit: I just texted my brother-in-law asking about FarmLogs. He said he just did a trial, it was pretty expensive. Now he's liking an app called "Farm at Hand", he's met the main developer and talked with him over email. Personal interaction seems to mean a LOT to farmers. Apparently the app is good and on the right track but needs a bit of tweaking. Also Farm Credit Canada is supposed to be coming out with an app soon that's going to be good at record keeping.
Modern farms are high tech operations run by highly knowledgeable experts. In fact, the line in the article "...while farming might seem like an odd place for tech investment.." is laughable. Many farmers in New Zealand, for example, have android tablets in their tractors feeding their GPS coordinates back to base, and giving them live information about rainfall for that paddock, etc. Every cow's hereditary is tracked, and individuals that produce interesting variants of milk are tested and studied.<p>So, the problem with the SaaS model is that selling to farmers is a lot like selling to a demanding enterprise customer. They know what they want, they have specific requirements and the benefits of a well-matched solution will pay for itself. That isn't, generally, where you want to be if you're looking to scale out a SaaS platform.<p>Be interesting to see how it goes.
This is a good solid niche to work in. Especially since, by creating a shared supply chain, you can tap into network effects to create barriers to entry.<p>In Australia I know people who are working on a similar product -- Agworld.com.au.
The article has a bit of a misstatement about Cargill and its cohorts in regards to this type of technology. They are actively selling this support to farms of all sizes and have been for years. I wish these folks luck, but they are competing against some of the biggest companies in the world who have been pushing this tech for awhile.
Thank you to all of you commenters from the FarmLogs team! Your feedback helps give us a glimpse of things we haven't learned yet, and it encourages us when you bring up things we're already using to our advantage.<p>PS - We're hiring an awesome front end dev, and mobile, if you'd like to join.
While FarmLogs may have unique selling points, there's already a lot of software targeted at farmers ... I can think of two in my local area:<p>- <a href="http://www.agintegrated.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.agintegrated.com/</a><p>- <a href="http://www.zedxinc.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zedxinc.com/</a>