“Software is Feeding the World” is a weekly newsletter for Food/AgTech leaders about technology trends.

Greetings from the San Francisco Bay Area, where the weather is a bit hot, and the entire state of California is in drought.

Three fears of farm data

A very common product strategy statement at many AgTech companies in the past was a simple three step process.

Many companies believed (and I have been guilty of it as well) getting access to farm level data was an end in itself. If you had enough data from the farm, you could convert into valuable insights, and so start a virtuous data flywheel. Many of the companies assumed that they could easily generate value using techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence.

This has turned out to be very tricky due to the seasonal nature of agriculture, data quality, skill sets required to turn data into insights, and most importantly setting unreasonable expectations with customers.

Sarah Nolet, and J. Matthew Pryor of Tenacious Ventures did an experimental podcast with Shane Thomas of Upstream Ag Insights. (By the way, if you are one of the few people who have not yet subscribed to Shane’s newsletter, you should first go do that.)

According to Matt’s emerging theory about uncertainty and fear about farm data is a largely unfounded barrier to adoption. (You should definitely listen to the discussion) A part of the thesis is the lack of interoperability between systems, causing a fear of being locked into one solution, and not being able to get their data out.

My thesis is a bit different.

If you can provide value to your customers, they will be much more likely to share the data with you, and worry much less about privacy. (There is immense talk about privacy and Facebook, but still billions of people continue to use it because of the value provided by Facebook).

Rather than the farmers' fears of their data being locked into a particular solution due to lack of interoperability, the lack of interoperability has been primarily driven by two reasons.

One: Zero sum game mentality - if I allow sharing of data and make it easy to do so, I will lose, while my partner/competitor will win.

Two: AgTech solution providers are not able to recognize the value of data sharing, and collaboration, and so have allocated resources to their own solution, rather than making it easy to share data between two systems.

I had made a similar point in edition 45 of the newsletter.

Within agriculture, Leaf Ag has become a leader in providing interoperability between systems. They are acting as a hub in a hub and spoke model of data movement. It is an interesting question whether Leaf Ag should exist as a company, and are they there purely because of lack of interoperability between systems? I believe Leaf Ag provides a very valuable service, and the company would have formed even if agriculture data was interoperable. (This is extremely unlikely, even though there are dominant standards like ADAPT, which have been constructed over 10-15 years.)

Following David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, (edition 86. David Ricardo and comparative advantage), Leaf is enabling an inter-company micro-services model. Leaf provides an independent and objective set of tools, to let AgTech providers focus on their core strengths.

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So why do AgTech companies talk so much about data privacy?

Data privacy shows up as among the top 3-4 issues among farmers in North America. I wrote extensively about data sharing all the way back in edition 16. Who let the data out?​

The notion of privacy is cultural too, as you don’t hear a lot of talk about privacy in the smallholder space. I will argue data privacy is even more important in the smallholder space, due to not-so-strong institutions and an extractive state in certain countries. For example, even in a democracy like India, many people have gotten in trouble for saying things which are critical of the state.

The other part of the thesis is tied to the concept that the “factory has no roof.” It assumes that through the use of remote sensing, an entity capable of processing the remote sensing data already knows a lot about the farmer’s operation.

It reminds me of a cartoon from many years ago,

Image source: Starecat.com​

While this is true in most cases, given the challenges with clouds, bad quality data, limited resolution (for example, the free Sentinel 2 data has a 10m x 10m resolution), the factory has a glass roof, which is covered with dust, dirt, and bird poop. Remote sensing also does not work very well with smallholder farmers where the average farm size is as low as 1 hectare.

The goal of remote sensing is not necessarily to replace farmer data. Farmer data augments and tunes the understanding achievable from remote sensing. There are many issues which are very hard to monitor using remote sensing only. For example, soil properties, hybrids used, fertilizer applied, livestock integration, etc. The combination of remote sensing, and ground truth data creates better representation of what’s happening on the farm.

So my thesis is that privacy is important to protect farmer interests, and if AgTech companies can provide enough value, then the issues with privacy will go down. Interoperability is an elusive goal with a murky definition, and creates resource prioritization and allocation challenges. The factory has no-roof will be more true in the future, but it will still need to be augmented with field level data.

Drones and Rice

Rice is a challenging crop with respect to mechanization due to flooded paddies. Rice cultivation is also one of the top emitters of methane, a significant greenhouse gas.

Drones provide an effective technology solution to automate some of the rice planting, and spraying operations. XAG has been a leader in drone based seeding and spraying operations.

Image source: XAG

XAG is scaling its use of agriculture drones in Vietnam for sustainable rice production. The high fertilizer prices have made drone operations more competitive from an economic standpoint. Farmers in Vietnam use drones for direct seeding, pesticide spraying and fertilizer applications.

The drones can fly autonomously based on a flight path. The XAG drone distributes rice seeds uniformly. The flying of drones creates another employment opportunity in the population, especially young folks. Drone spraying allows for precision spraying, and application resulting in lower use of costly chemicals like fertilizer.

Job Board

I am running an experiment to highlight jobs in agriculture and AgTech. Here are two jobs for this week.

1. Senior Software Engineer, MartEye (Galway, Ireland)

MartEye helps farmers simply and securely purchase Livestock and Machinery Online.

​https://www.marteye.ie/senior-software-engineer​

2. Technical Program Manager, Mineral, X (Mountain View, California, USA)

​https://x.company/careers-at-x/6028717002/​

Full disclosure: I work as a Product Manager on Mineral.

In the news

Nutrien wants you to reduce total amount of nitrogen at the field level by 5%. The 5% reduction is based on a three-year baseline amount applied for the same crop. You get a discount if you switch to Nutrien products.

AXA, Unilever, and Tikehau launch an impact fund to accelerate regenerative agriculture transition.

The fund will be managed by Tikehau Capital, with the following three core pillars. It will bring Unilever’s global supply chain and local market position to the table.

One: By protecting soil health as a means of fighting climate change, supporting biodiversity, and preserving water resources.

Two: By contributing to the future supply of regenerative ingredients to meet both the needs of a growing global population and consumer demand for more sustainable products.

Three: By unlocking innovative solutions that aim to accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture.

Network effects in nature restoration? According to a recent article in Nature Communications, ”during nature restoration the efficiency of nutrient cycling and carbon uptake can increase by a shift in fungal composition and/or fungal activity.”

European precision agriculture leader Sencrop raises $ 18 m to advance micro-climate understanding. “Sencrop’s sensors and platform enable 20,000 farmers to have access to real-time and predictive data pertaining to their fields vis-a-vis micro-climatic information, water stress details, plant growth stages, disease and pest status, and more.”

Ward Lab offers additional packages for soil health assessment, including TraceGenomics.

AGCO operation hit by ransomware attacks. More than 1000 employees were sent home from production facilities. The FBI has issued warnings about ransomware attacks last year and this year, especially related to farming co-ops. I had covered cybersecurity and vulnerabilities to agriculture infrastructure in edition 70. A tractor load of vulnerabilities.

​Average wheat yields in Germany are four times compared to Argentina, and almost double compared to the US.

The German farm had the highest yield. However, this farm had an average loss per ton of $7 over the 2016 to 2020 period

​Magic below our feet​

According to the 4 per mille initiative, if the global soil organic carbon content increased by 0.4% annually all anthropogenic carbon emissions would be fully offset. Our soils are the largest carbon bank on earth, and if utilized correctly, they can go above and beyond the status quo of carbon removal.

Forest restoration alone has the potential to improve food security for over 1 billion people & sequester around 30% of atmospheric CO2 from the industrial revolution's inception. That's just forests.

Incentives Matter! Massive tree planting programs contributed to deforestation in Mexico.

In order to participate in the reforestation program and collect a monthly wage from the government, farmers need access to cleared land where they can plant timber-yielding and fruit trees. Sowing Life thus incentivizes farmers to clear forested land.

So, what do you think?

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About me

My name is Rhishi Pethe. I lead the product management team at Project Mineral (focused on sustainable agriculture). The views expressed in this newsletter are my personal opinions.