Google Investing in Agriculture

[Klause]

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/12/alphabets-latest-moonshot-is-a-field-roving-plant-inspecting-robo-buggy/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/12/alphabets-latest-moonshot-is-a-field-roving-plant-inspecting-robo-buggy/



Google is getting into Agtech... through big data.


Plant intelligence... scanning every row and every plant, applying pesticides and fertilizers targeted to a square foot instead of 160 or 320 acres.


Obviously not quite workable on broad acre crops yet... but this is what the future is going to.

[TSIPP]

It’s An interesting concept that should turn out very well, I think there’s drones that fly around and go after weeds and spray the ones you want eliminated, I don’t think the drones are doing large fields yet but something like 20 acres an hour.

[bgmb]

we should all be investing in google too

[iceman]

Maybe google coming into the space is a good thing. Let’s face it a lot of these digital screens we use need to be more user friendly. Maybe are only hope for any sort of standardization is from google

Iceman

[tweety]

Took them long enough. Farmers give millions to company's like Farmers Edge, Farmers edge sells that data you just paid to give them for millions to third party company's to price millions of dollars of products effectively to sell to farmers.

For the love of Pete farmers...... Why??????

[furrowtickler]

Google best buds with FBN

[farmaholic]

Ask Amazon about the importance of data.

[tweety]

Telus has recently acquired Agrian. Their stack is now Agrian, Farm at Hand. Muddy Boots, AgIntegration, TKXS, and investors in Hummingbird - an AI based crop analytics and data company using remote imagery.

So yes, make em rich. You're doing a great job, Telus is counting on you to be super naive.

[MBgrower]

Google has a history of developing or buying out competing tech or services, and later abandoned them. Im losing faith in them.

[jazz]

Google wont survive the anti trust forces coming their way. I want them no where near my farm operation and neither should any farmer.

There are no legit investments anymore. Every one comes with control from one party, just like Amazon who uses the post office to subsidize delivery while putting mom and pop out of business and harvesting your data.

Nobody is coming to invest in agriculture.

[tweety]

Google wont survive the anti trust forces coming their way. I want them no where near my farm operation and neither should any farmer.

They will easily survive them as its a deeply flawed case. People choose to use google and isn't integral to an OS. What's next, sue Amazon for being too big?

It's odd you don't want google near your farm as everyone else is already there.

[furrowtickler]

They will easily survive them as its a deeply flawed case. People choose to use google and isn't integral to an OS. What's next, sue Amazon for being too big?

It's odd you don't want google near your farm as everyone else is already there.

How so ? I bet less than 30% of farms at best

[jazz]

How so ? I bet less than 30% of farms at best

Google can have my satellite images, lot of good its going to do them.

Otherwise nobody knows my real production or my methods. I could be storing all that fertilizer and maybe my reported yields to crop insurance werent quite accurate. Who knows what these bins hold.

The only tech on my equipment is a broke ass auto steer.

And Farmers Edge will be physically chased off my property if they come near.

[Klause]

Google can have my satellite images, lot of good its going to do them.

Otherwise nobody knows my real production or my methods. I could be storing all that fertilizer and maybe my reported yields to crop insurance werent quite accurate. Who knows what these bins hold.

The only tech on my equipment is a broke ass auto steer.

And Farmers Edge will be physically chased off my property if they come near.

I can measure your bins to the nearest bushel from space, as to the volume they hold.

FLIR which is installed on most drones, and also some sats can detect the amount of bushels inside the bin because the grain is warmer or colder than the bins.

This technology is already being used. I was privy to the discussions on it.

Sask Crop Insurance wants to start using this tech.

Every lb of fert you buy, and bushel you deliver is logged.


This is what Google does. It takes incredible amounts of information, from varying sources, assembles them, and then creates a full picture.


I did a meeting with a client this evening as to their site's performance... To the point of telling them that 62% of their visitors are searching for a used vehicle when they stumble across their site. More women than men. Most are under 35. Their credit scores are over 500 but under 700. They live in their own home. They owe over 300,000 on a mortgage, and they prefer netflix to amazon.

They also spend more screen time on their phones than tablets, but only 1/10th of them have computers.

1/3rd buy things online. Half of them have investigated online shopping.


The client was absolutely amazed at this... and it's scratching the surface...


Information aggregation, assimilation, processing, and then creating educated assumptions from it. That's "big data".