The land grab for farm data

I&#x27;m the lead software architect at a major agricultural and construction equipment manufacturer. I deal with this stuff every day.<p>I&#x27;m not aware of any efforts to make collected data available but what I can say about the company I work for is that we largely view the data the farmer or operator&#x27;s personal property. We don&#x27;t transmit it back to any data center presently but we do have ways to copy the captured data off to a USB stick for post processing which a number of 3rd party precision farming applications are on the market to read it.<p>What I can say about the data is that it&#x27;s voluminous. Our software collect all kinds of data besides just precision farming data. For example, CAN bus faults, GPS history (vehicle guidance), weather conditions (temperature, humidity), etc... And the way the data is collected follows no industry set standard - it&#x27;s pretty much proprietary formats.<p>Also, much of our data collection is stored locally in a binary format to save space and improve performance. We have tools that move the data back to a flat file&#x2F;text format for post processing.<p>I&#x27;m not involved with the 3rd parties that use the data but my guess is that someone has shared with them the formats and such.

&gt;Farm data is expected to be a $20–$25 billion revenue opportunity, but we haven’t yet determined how the data can be collected, structured, stored and shared, let alone monetized.<p>For crying out loud...

&gt; Farmers tell me, “Look, I know that my data has value because everyone wants it. The part that frustrates me is that companies want my data in return for some undefined ‘value.’ Meanwhile they are often upselling me for additional services that would not exist without my data.&quot;<p>Sounds like a good description of what&#x27;s been going on across the economy for 20 years. Farmers are asking the same question many others are asking: how can I keep more of my own data&#x27;s value for myself?

Idea: Co-Op program<p>Farmers join a local Co-Op, say &quot;Iowa&#x27;s Data Co-Op&quot;. The Data Co-Op then sells to the highest bidder, then after a small management fee returns dividends to the participating farmers.<p>The Data Co-Op partners with equipment integrators to build data collection devices and data transformations.

And here&#x27;s what the American Farm Bureau Federation is doing about it.[1] See their Ag Data Transparency Evaluator.[2]<p>The parent article totally ignores the major farming organizations.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fb.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;bigdata&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fb.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;bigdata&#x2F;</a> [2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fb.org&#x2F;agdatatransparent&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fb.org&#x2F;agdatatransparent&#x2F;</a>

AG are the original data science folks. SAS was started to help farmers analyze crops 40 or so years ago.

I could see myself dedicating my life to making software to help farmers organize their farm data and sell it. Anyone know of companies that do this?<p><i></i>edit: I&#x27;m a full-stack application developer with a lot of experience working with non-techy business owners and proven success as a problem-solver. I&#x27;m interested in getting into this industry as a technical project manager. Email me if you&#x27;re looking for such a person (it&#x27;s in my profile). I&#x27;ll be in contact with the companies in the comments below, too. Thanks!

Precision Planting HQ is 2 corn fields away (~5 miles) from the house I grew up in in rural Illinois. Maybe I shouldn&#x27;t have moved to the west coast to chase startups...

What I think is going to be most interesting is companies&#x2F;banks&#x2F;insurances agencies being able to gleam information without going through the farmers at all. Not by subverting them and going to the machinery manufacturers, which is already happening, but just by using other sources of information, such as satellite imagery.<p>It&#x27;s already possible to predict yield potential through biomass&#x2F;NDVI monitoring via satellite, and given that imagery from a source such as LandSat is freely available, or something like Planet isn&#x27;t that expensive once your a bank&#x2F;insurance agency I&#x27;m certain they must already be using.<p>Once you can predict yields reliably via satellite, you can start to predict supply for certain types of grain in different regions, or to a lesser extent, countries as a whole. This data is useful to investment banks and insurers, as well as organisations such as CBH[1], that handle the entirety of Western Australia&#x27;s grain export. They currently determine potential yield by sending out a grower survey, and asking the farmers to predict yields themselves.<p>I think the idea of anyone &quot;stealing&quot; our data is overrated. The data from our farm[2] is specific to our farm, and as long as where not farming in such a way that is detrimental to our partners (such as banks&#x2F;suppliers), such that we were trying to lie about yield potential, or resource usage, I&#x27;m not sure what value could be stolen by anyone with our info. In fact we openly share all the trial work we do, so that everyone in the community can learn and benefit.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbh.com.au&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbh.com.au&#x2F;</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hectare.ag&#x2F;nook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hectare.ag&#x2F;nook</a>

This seems to confirm just how important the price of data is for ML &amp; AI based startups. Methinks there is a market alone for data companies, not even those that are necessarily doing anything productive with said data, just collecting it.<p>Also raises the question of whether its possible to bootstrap a data science, ML, or AI startup, given the high expense of purchasing that data.

I&#x27;m not sure the farmer should be getting in the way of data collection. Regional and global optimizations can be mined from a large enough set of ag data. Do we really want to nickel and dime research this way? Its a fair question.<p>I know; there&#x27;s a sense of ownership. But farmers are just one participant in the chain of data management. They just happen to be the one person residing physically over the land. So they could charge rent on data. But should they?