> Still think the real money to be made is in the weekend gardener/farmer not the big guys
Funny, I had the opposite reaction. We currently run 350 acres and it really doesn't seem like enough land to lose track of. I could see the farmer with a few thousand acres benefiting from this though. Large enough where accounting for the details starts to become a problem, but small enough to not have all the latest gadgets that automatically record all of the details for you.
With that said, I like the idea of having the data. I'm just not sure I could see myself recording everything. Now, if my cell phone would use its sensors to determine what I'm doing in the field and record the information automatically, that might be rather interesting.
Agree completely, and think the same thing that would keep you from using FL prevents a 1k+ farm from picking it up, which is the action of usage itself is a barrier. An idea would be to track you through the day and create a log that you could then markup/import into FL at night.
As for the weekend users, I was talking more about a well executed "garden planner" with lots of learning and reference information. The look and feel on farmlogs is already in that space sorta, with the trendy ui. Before I had grown for a couple years, and then moved out to 50 acres, I would have payed and did pay for tools, but they all failed pretty hard below the some form of row crop range.
I did have a look at http://www.growveg.com which was surprisingly good, but still does not tie in the fact that most of the users are going to be novices, that need education with the tools. The suggestion/education/local tie in for a garden planner is a space that is as of yet untapped, and there are a lot more weekend warriors to pay monthly or annual fees than farmers.
I guess my thinking on thousands of acres is that management of people starts to become an issue. Keeping track of what your employees have done, and should do next, is something that needs to be communicated anyway. Whether FarmLogs beats the two-way radio remains to be seen, but I think there is potential there.
Of course there is competition in that space too. John Deere has an integrated management solution on this level built right into their equipment from the factory. It actually looks very slick, reporting all kinds of data that FarmLogs will struggle to access without the same level of integration. I expect it is a little too costly for the average sized farm though, which is where FarmLogs may fit in.
I do think they have hit the mark on grain storage management. While that is not a big problem on my farm, as we send all our grain straight to the elevator, it is a real problem other farms have. It is a request I have heard many farmers make. That is data that is easy to lose track of and one you want to have at your fingertips.
I'm quite keen to watch where they take the company. I think they could use what they have as a good starting point to solve some of the deeper problems in the industry.
Funny, I had the opposite reaction. We currently run 350 acres and it really doesn't seem like enough land to lose track of. I could see the farmer with a few thousand acres benefiting from this though. Large enough where accounting for the details starts to become a problem, but small enough to not have all the latest gadgets that automatically record all of the details for you.
With that said, I like the idea of having the data. I'm just not sure I could see myself recording everything. Now, if my cell phone would use its sensors to determine what I'm doing in the field and record the information automatically, that might be rather interesting.