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 The setup, light years from what it was when the former Navy pilot
started farming nine years ago, includes technology from Monsanto
and Deere & Co.. But alongside them is an iPad running an app by
tiny startup 640 Labs, boasting every bit as much savvy as the
Goliaths' latest offerings.
He is gathering inch-by-inch yield data through sensor-packed and
GPS-guided equipment, aiming to pinpoint the good soil on his
roughly 3,000 acre (1,214 hectare)farm, where he may plant more
densely next season, and the bad, where he may plant less or
fertilize more.
"The goal ultimately is to customize every input to every field and
zone within the field, and to have enough data and analysis tools
and models to make the best farming decisions possible," Gould said.
Big agriculture companies, such as Monsanto, Deere and DuPont
Pioneer, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technologies
that use detailed data on soil type, seed variety, and weather to
help farmers grow more at a lower cost. But as the race for
dominance on the farm heats up, a number of small tech startups are
launching competing products.
They are powered by many of the same data sources such as freely
available rainfall totals from the National Weather Service and
field boundaries gleaned from Google Maps. They also tap data
gathered by farm machines and transferred via flash drive or beamed
wirelessly to the cloud.
Agriculture is the latest industry hoping to capitalize on Big Data,
or using new technologies to gather and analyze large, complex,
previously unwieldy data sets to anticipate behavior and results and
boost efficiency.
All hope their tools can help even the most productive farms squeeze
out more grain, another 15 percent by some estimates, by telling
farmers what to plant where and how densely or by informing them
where to drive tractors to limit yield-sapping soil compression.
Gould does not know yet which company's product he will ultimately
choose.
FREE FOR NOW
Several companies are offering basic packages for little to no cost
with an eye on eventually signing farmers up for premium services
such as planting prescriptions or grain marketing advice.
Climate Corporation, bought by Monsanto last year for around $1
billion, is an early leader in the young market. Its free Climate
Basic product used on more than 50 million acres (20.2 million
hectares), or about 15 percent of total U.S. farmland. Around 1
million acres are under its premium service Climate Pro, free this
year and $3 an acre next year.
Among startups, Michigan-based FarmLogs has enrollments for its
software product, also a free service, at around 15 percent of U.S.
farms, triple what they had in January. The company, which raised $5
million in two funding rounds, declined to provide total acreage
enrolled.
640 Labs, which raised nearly $3 million in its latest funding, said
its subscriber base has increased four-fold since the spring but
declined to disclose acreage under management.
Most companies are focused on launching products in the United
States, the world's largest grain producer and exporter, where
detailed data on soils and weather is readily available. But they
see growth opportunities in modern farming regions like South
America, Australia and Europe.
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The industry is expected to grow fast. Monsanto called the Climate
Corp acquisition its ticket to a $20 billion market. DuPont Pioneer
forecast its farm data products would add $500 million to annual
sales over the next decade.
That growth potential and the low cost of scaling up
software-as-a-service business have attracted venture capitalists
like Mark Kvamme, co-founder of Drive Capital and an early investor
in FarmLogs. The former Sequoia Capital partner called the startup a
"disruptor," much like Google was when his former company invested
in the then No. 13 search engine. "Everyone's got a computer in
their pocket and connectivity to the net. You can now create
software as a service, like FarmLogs has done on Amazon web
services, and provide these services across the United States and
across the world very efficiently," Kvamme said.
But the investments in an increasingly crowded field of farm data
services are not without risk. Although providers say farmers can
save money on inputs like fertilizer, it remains unclear how many
growers will sign up for premium services with crop prices at the
lowest in more than four years.
While getting their products into farmers' hands has been a
challenge for start-ups that lack the reach and marketing budgets of
their bigger rivals, their independence from big companies with
their branded products can be a selling point.
"We've very explicitly avoided partnerships with any agricultural
brands that could sway us one direction or another. I don't think
that's appropriate," said FarmLogs co-founder and CEO Jesse Vollmar.
The ability of small firms to respond quickly to customers' requests
and update products also gives them an edge.
Climate Corp uses farmer feedback for product development, but the
process can take up to a year or more, according to spokeswoman
Christy Toedebusch. DuPont Pioneer is also open to feedback, but
runs pilot trials before commercializing products, spokeswoman Jane
Slusark said.
In contrast, when Illinois farmer Steve Pitstick challenged 640 Labs
to address production-sapping soil compaction caused by grain carts
during harvest, 640 developed a method to map the cart's weight and
its path through the field, helping Pitstick to minimize the damage.
"Our weapon is we can turn on a dime," said 640 Labs co-founder and
chief technology officer Craig Rupp. "We're very nimble."
(Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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