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Technology in Agriculture, Simplified

What Sucked about AgTech in 2018

December 12, 2018 by admin | 0 comments

So what happened with the AgTech sector in 2018? A ton of things: many announcements of new products, services, investments, start-ups, along with some mergers and acquisitions; But the story of the AgTech sector in 2018 isn’t as simple as the headlines you read in traditional agriculture media or on any tech blog. A lot of folks in the sector got a reality check this year, and that check was a long time coming.

As someone who frequently talks technology with producers and some of those inside AgTech, I was curious as to why we all feel so stuck. I decided to compile a list, over a period of several months, of why AgTech is struggling to connect with producers. This is focused particularly in row crop country. It didn’t take me long to realize a whole lot of producers feel the same way I do. Many of those producers are very passionate about the issues because they’re frustrated or feel they’ve been burned on previous purchases. To be blunt, a large portion of the AgTech sector has not listened to their mainstream customers. A couple of tweets and 60,000+ impressions later, here’s a list I’ve compiled of what sucked about the AgTech sector in 2018.

Thanks to everyone on Twitter who helped contribute to this list
(Twitter threads at the bottom, click to see all the replies)

 

 

What Sucked about AgTech in 2018
List compiled by Aaron Bobeck, December 2018 – AaronBobeck.com

MARKETING ISSUES

  • BS Claims! – save or make producer $xx/acre
  • Difficult to tell facts from opinions, news from advertisements
  • How many people we need to feed by 2050
  • Hidden company agenda or prices
  • Difficult to see actual product screenshots or video, demonstration
  • Borderline harassment of sales calls and emails
  • Data, data, data (I’d much prefer useful information myself)
  • Overuse and misuse of buzzwords like AI and ML, ‘game changer’, ‘industry leading’, ‘no longer need to walk fields to scout’

PRODUCT ISSUES

  • Always changing pricing and offerings
  • Broken software, hardware, downtime
  • Incomplete website and mobile app functionality vs desktop applications
  • Solutions in search of a problem
  • Continuous subscription fees, sometimes from products/services that used to be a one-time fee (subscriptions might be necessary in some situations, but $x/ac is frustrating)
  • Products/services end up making more overall work for customer, not less – (not making life easier!)
  • Poor user interfaces! – can’t see in sun, constantly changes, difficult to understand symbols but no text on buttons, little structure, complicated logins, multiple websites for diff parts of product
  • Producer feels company gets more value out of data than they do
  • Services don’t work together (this is improving, but still far from perfect)
  • No one-stop shop (there will never be one)
  • Lack of quality data – both on farm side (ex: yield data) and product side (ex: rainfall)
  • No way to correct bad data (yield, rainfall, etc.)
  • Hardware that requires frequent replacement (ex: cellular connectivity)
  • Standards / compatibility, or lack thereof… (ex: ISO 11783 is stretched beyond its originally intended capabilities) (folks are working on these issues, but it’s going to be a while.. think of the 3 point quick hitch)
  • Privacy and ownership of data of all kinds (ex: yield, land, equipment, contact info, etc.)
  • Not getting on-board with modern consumer communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, affordable cellular data / using more expensive, specialized data plans
  • Animal / livestock AgTech behind, but catching up… as much or more opportunity there
  • If a product/service massively under-performs year after year, will buyers of that product or in that segment ever come back after the issues are fixed?
  • Seasonal products/services that don’t have yearlong usability
  • Producers can’t own a product, companies moving towards leasing or ‘as a service’ (think we’ll continue to see more and more of this, regardless of popular producer opinion)
  • Ag is a limited market, not a mass volume like general consumer products (producers often don’t realize this)

PEOPLE ISSUES

  • Employee turnover – no consistency to build trust with customers
  • Employee knowledge gaps – no farm experience, especially in row crops, customers know the products / services better than many reps
  • Management doesn’t understand customer base, chases latest fad
  • Silicon Valley pushes things they want to push things that scale quickly for a $$$ exit – or fit their agenda (say with environmentalism)
  • Investment has been too high in some areas – everyone wants in the space and to scale right now
  • Large companies subsidizing products to the point it drives down competitive innovation
  • Listening to customer requests and getting that information upwards in the company
  • Products or services made for a small portion of potential customers, without feedback from the masses
  • Broken promises around functionality etc.
  • Feedback, or lack thereof quality feedback from mainstream users

SPECIFIC PRODUCT / SERVICE ISSUES
Not providing value for many – time and money invested greater than benefit gained

  • x$/ac computer agronomy services: ex: N models, lack sufficient accurate rainfall data
  • Drones: too much work, still not perfect software/hardware
  • Aerial imagery: might show problem areas, but not until it’s too late and doesn’t give an answer to what the problem is or how to fix it
  • Enterprise resource planning software: excessively expensive, tailored to specific and larger farms
  • New products sometimes have lose functionality and are more difficult to use than the old ones
  • Weather stations: chaotic and changing situations in the space, unreliable data

WHAT’S MISSING

  • “Make my life easier”   (my favorite saying)
  • We still suck at the basics
  • Automation – don’t make users input tons of info, automatically gather from other sources
  • Intelligence – be predictive: use sensors and data to alert before costly or irreversible problems happen, then make a recommendation what to do about said problem
  • Shark Farmer’s @sf28430 mom