What do farmers really want? Simple solutions that work together. Agtech, it’s our job to offer them exactly that.
Farmers are battling real problems.
Low market prices, high cost of inputs, erratic weather events, and increasing regulations. When you talk with farmers, these are the most commonly cited concerns. Each one of these problems in itself is complex and difficult to solve.
Agtech’s job is to support the farm with real solutions.
If the farm was to write Agtech a letter, I expect it might look something like this:
Dear Agtech,
I am drowning in reports and forms that I need to submit to 20 different organizations. And I don’t want 20 different apps on my phone.
Every newspaper I read suggests that this is only going to get worse. Help!
Sincerely,
The Farm.
New regulations demand collaborative solutions
At Farmable, we are committed to serving the farm manager on small and medium-sized farms around the world. We offer a free farm management app in 10 languages to enable farms to gather, organize, and use their data to make the best possible decisions. Having organized data also prepares the farm for simple compliance reporting, reducing the stress of changing regulations.
Over the past couple of years, we have seen new regulations for farm reporting take shape, especially in Europe. Some of these regulations are still being debated and targets are currently unclear. What is clear is that in the next few seasons, European farms will be mandated to start sharing electronic data on their crop treatments. While this change may not be immediately welcomed by farms struggling with a long list of very real problems (☝️ ), it offers an opportunity for both the farm and the Agtech industry to make a positive change.
Calling All Agtech
We can all agree that better data will help the farm. The Agtech industry has been growing rapidly over the past 2 decades with the intent to offer data to the farm and improve decision making. In the future, agtech solutions won’t be optional. It will be an essential part of operating a compliant farm. But there are so many of us agtech products out there, the farm doesn’t know what to choose. And often it feels like choosing one solution means the farm won’t be compatible with other solutions. The bottom line is we need to collaborate.
No one tech solution is going to solve all the needs of the farm.
Rules of Collaboration
So, how do we work together in a way that supports the farm manager?
At Farmable, we’ve started collaborations with private and public teams to integrate products for farms worldwide. Our own journey with collaboration is in the early stages but we have already learned some things along the way. Here are 4 key principles that make collaboration smoother:
1. Farmers are in control
The farm owns and controls its data. Hopefully most agtech teams agree with this important principle. If not, then consider that all the new regulations are formulated in a way that squarely puts the responsibility for the farm’s operations on the shoulders of the farmer himself or herself. It’s not the cooperatives’ job, and it’s not the wholesalers’ job to ensure the farms are compliant. This is very important, because without assuming this responsibility fully, the farmer’s can not expect to control and defend their own position in the food value chain.
For example, at Farmable we fully recognize that the farmer owns all data gathered at the farm, and controls who gets access to that data, and for what purpose. It’s our guarantee to all farmers that their data will never be shared with any third parties without their explicit active agreement to do so. We will also strive for the farmer to be directly and financially compensated for any use of said data.
2. Agtech must enable quality data
The only way to consistently gather high-quality data is through extensive automation. By this, we mean that a software tool needs to guide the farmer through the necessary steps of planning, executing, monitoring, and documenting in a consistent manner. All mistakes need to be identified and mitigated before they happen, and anything that can be automated must be automated. The result will then be data in the right format, every time, without effort.
3. The farm must benefit
Before you go too far down the path of partner integration, make sure the benefit to the farm is clear. It’s easy to find partners that might have the same market focus as you, but if connecting your services doesn’t add value to the farm in a very obvious way, skip it.
Any integration will require some effort from both technical and commercial team members, so ensure it directly benefits your end customer.
4. Stay true to your core skill
Each one of us needs to be clear on what our value to the farm is. What makes our respective products and services unique? Farmable builds farm management software (FMS). We aim to be the most user-friendly FMS platform for farmers. Our core skill is amazing product design and keeping large amounts of data well organized and easily understood by the farm.
There are many other opportunities we could chase, but we don’t. We want other players to take on these challenges. Solutions related to variable rate mapping, quality controls, precision weather data, pest and disease prediction are very important and add value to the farming business. While these products are not FMS tools themselves, they have data that benefit the farm if visualized in an FMS. Combined, these datasets work to allow a farm to easily meet regulatory requirements.
When each player focuses on their piece of the puzzle, the better it is for the farmers.
Collaboration means APIs
The way to make this move faster is to facilitate efficient sharing of data.
The farm has a long list of stakeholders they need to engage with; certification bodies, wholesalers, cooperatives, banks, insurers, not to mention other agtech providers. It’s paramount that farmers are able to share their own data in an efficient way. And that’s what APIs are for.
At Farmable, we are now launching APIs for all farm data, meaning other third-party companies can access this data, provided, of course, that the farmers have granted such access.
Data sharing simplifies compliance and more
Once the farm consistently documents all the necessary farm operations data, easily fulfilling compliance regulations is just the first of many benefits. Without additional effort, this collaborative data-position opens the door to many opportunities, for example:
- Reduced effort in GlobalGAP (or other) certification processes. The audit process typically needs the same documentation as the government already asked for. The FMS will repurpose the data, ship it to the auditor prior to the farm visit, and reduce the friction of the process significantly.
- Automatically prove compliance to the bank. Often farmers get their banks to provide loans secured by the expected subsidies for the year. Since all the data is already there, a previously slow documentation process can now be reduced to a one-click application.
- Prove quality and traceability to wholesalers. When you sell a batch of produce to a wholesaler, this batch can be automatically accompanied by a digital stamp documenting the contents of the batch.
There is much more, but we’ll save some for a later occasion.
Data sharing is better for farmers
In conclusion, we want to point out the obvious: farmers will get better services from their stakeholders if they have easy access to contextual and specific data for the service offering in question. When we agree that the farmer owns the farm’s data and controls access to this data, there is not really any meaningful risk of misuse.
At Farmable we are dedicated to facilitating this data sharing for farms and invite other agtech teams to join us in collaborating to offer the very best solutions to farms. The Farmable APIs are our first step in achieving this objective.
If you are interested in collaborating to make life easier for the farm, please contact us.
