 It’s not new that I am a really big fan of super well integrated platforms and given the really fragmented offering in Ag Tech in North America, I have always been advocating for “the universal easy button” to help farming be efficient, sustainable and profitable. Yet the reciprocal cultural hurdles are way higher than I ever imagined. From the usual “you’re not from Ag” to downright universal tech skepticism, here are a few of the best Ag quotes I have been able to gather over the past few years 9. I thought you said I could fix all my problems with your imagery! 8. You can’t have all my data because I lost it in one of my hundreds of USB drives. 7. When you said calibrate my data, you didn’t even ask if I knew what the heck I was doing? Can I still send you 100 files from the last four years with two different types of combines? Oh, also my neighbor helped. I’ll take that free hat now. 6. We just raised $10 million and said “artificial intelligence” so will you pay us $5 per acre? 5. So, my super high-res imagery doesn’t work on my monitor and I ran out of storage since I have like 10,000 pictures. Also, after losing the third drone, the fourth one is free, right? 4. SSURGO? Sounds more like “Sure, go ahead and waste my money on that really bad soil/VRA map!” Wait, I get free VRA maps and a year subscription? I’ll take it! 3. If you think machine learning is cool, try losing thousands of dollars by switching your agronomy decision to someone like GEICO! 2. Oh cool, another sensor to put on my ground. But wait, look at that, a free plastic rain gauge with calendar. What does yours do better? “Tells you the future…” Awesome, here is $1,500. 1. “It’s unlikely but there is a small chance this data from this machine will work in this other machine you may just need to spend another 10k on this system instead.” Here’s the only solution that will work: the winning strategy is to build an all-in-one, API driven, open ag platform that is field-based, features a mix of actual data and synthetic modeling toward digital twins and delivers accurate predictive recommendations with the best easy button in the industry. Let me know what you think!
My name's phil mora and I write about the things I love: fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic. Head of Product thinker, doer, designer, coder, leader
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 The promises of digital twins in Ag is that they are goint to allow farmers and their crop consultants to simulate, plan, analyze, and improve crop growth way ahead of time — maximizing yields and making farming more sustainable. What is a digital twin? When we assemble all Ag-relevant digital technologies into a cohesive platform, we end up with a digital representation of the entire agricultural effort: physical assets, processes, systems, resources, finance, in short, everything. In turn, this representation allows to simulate, plan, analyze, and improve agricultural processes at a previously unimagined scale – that’s what digital twins do. Digital Twins aren’t new, but in definitely in agriculture they’re most certainly a convincing approach
In conclusion, digital twin modeling in agriculture helps to simulate, plan, analyze, and improve the way we grow crops to maximize yields, reduce stresses on water supplies and soil quality, and help make farming a sustainable practice. Let me know what you think!
My name's phil mora and I blog about the things I love fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic. Head of Product thinker, doer, designer, coder, leader  “We need an MVP in 6 months!” declares the fresh-faced entrepreneur. “Let’s just build something fast, whatever it is, product person, bootstrap the business and get it going really quickly!” … Indeed, an MVP or minimum viable product – something that allows you to get the product out there, launch the tech, market the product and raise the next round, is often seen as the holy grail from non-Silicon Valley types, practically a magical technology fashion statement. And do it fast! Like in 6 months, let’s just half bake a something deliberately basic, like a pre-beta, to give a little teaser to the investors, staff and CEOs dreaming up “It’s no problem if it’s not perfect” they’ll say – you can always fix it post launch and worry about any issues at a later date …. Sounds familiar? People asking for an “MVP” is one of my pet hates. This is very much 10 years ago in the tech industry but I am still seeing this … What people are really saying is “Let’s cut corners” (my favorite: this is agile! not waterfall!) yes, let’s put a v0.1 product out there, likely to be riddled with bugs and much worse, put a badly thought product out to market and then what … pray? A lot of founders are big dreamers, and while I am not into condescending their naiveté, the desire for a “quick and dirty” fix that gets the product on the way as a quicker route to revenue has been proven to cause much bigger problems for the business in the long term. Relying on an MVP at stage one often ignores proper engineering principles and is literally like building your house on sand and hoping it will stay standing in the future. The issues with a poorly planned MVP The #1 obvious issue is that you will, in 2021, when everyone has a digital life, you will lose every customer as they’re pushed buggy software that collapses at the first sign of normal usage – in other words, when you just settle for a poorly baked MVP and release incomplete software, you will leave your customers unimpressed, assuming they’re still customers after that experience. And because users are very discerning today as their digital life already has placed the bar pretty high, with little patience, they’ll immediately dismiss and not bother with if the product doesn’t work the first time – just go with a dodgy experience, sign-up process badly designed, confusing interface and you have lost your customers from day one and forever. And they’ll most likely talk about it on social platforms … So … is going down the v0.1 half-baked MVP route really worth that risk? The “move fast and break things”. culture was probably okay between 2005 and 2015, but that era is absolutely over! And if your entrepreneur boss hopes that if the product in the future is still miraculously a success and then you can go back and fix the problems, keep your customers and without compromising their data, just remind them that your customers are not your beta testers. Not, ever. “being agile (as in “not waterfall”) is not about releasing crap. Product people don’t release crap, period. That’s why I always use the term “Minimal Lovable Product” and ban using the term MVP from my product teams. Yes, literally. So how to avoid the MVP trap and get directly to think product MLP?
Let me know what you think!
My name's phil mora and I blog about the things I love fitness, hacking work, tech and anything holistic. Head of Product thinker, doer, designer, coder, leader |
i blog about the things I love: fitness, hacking work, tech, Experiences and anything holistic.
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