Farming market?

ynotech

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Alberta, Canada
I was just thinking about finding more clients and came to the realization that there is a lot of agriculture in the area. I know that farms are using computers more and more, but I don't really know what all is involved in what they do.

Does anyone have experience working on farmer's systems?
Any tips for marketing to them?
Specialized software/systems I can recommend or even resell?

I'm thinking this could be an interesting niche to get into!
 
Majority of our agricultural clients use the Farmplan suite of software. I don't think it's something you can resell and it's UK based so might not even be available to you.

We do a good amount of CCTV for farms. They have tons of expensive equipment, vehicles, tanks of diesel etc stored on site with very few neighbours to witness if anything gets stolen.

Also install a lot of CCTV purely for monitoring livestock. Apparently when they are giving birth you have to check on them constantly so this saves a lot of walking back and forth to the barn.
 
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Most farmers I work with in the local area use field mapping software. Not really something you can resell as most are proprietary and have their own tech support for it. I have worked with a few flavors of it, one by John Deere.
They also typically have some sort of data collection for the fields and crops used with all kinds of information.

I'm actually surprised at how some of these farmers use this software, but can barley figure out their PC.

If you work on a farmers PC that has this type of software, don't lose any data! The mapping data is a pain to replace if they lose it. It's also not always intuitive where the data is being stored by the program. I've worked with maybe 3 flavors of the software and each one stored the data in a different place.

Support their PC's with a managed service and offer a backup plan for their mapping data, your best options.
Leave the farming software to the farm tech companies.
 
Farming, unfortunately, is a pretty locked-down market I've found. A couple of areas that you might look into though:

1. Long-range Wireless: This one can be a pretty solid money-maker. A lot of dryers and even storage bins now are using computers to monitor the contents of said dryers/bins. The ability for a guy to monitor his grain temps, make adjustments, or even shut down the system from his phone is a big draw for a lot of guys. Most dryer companies sell the dryer/computer/software as a package but the one thing they usually lack is a way to get internet connectivity to the location. That's usually considered the customer's responsibility and is where you come in. A lot of times it's not a huge distance to go from a source of internet like their house or shop to the bins but it's long enough (or through bad enough terrain) to make running a physical wire very expensive if not downright impossible. As a result, long range outdoor wireless networking antennas (like what ubiquiti or engenius have) can fill that gap and put a pretty penny in your pocket. They're simple to do (hardly any major interference in the sticks besides hills/trees) and usually pay pretty well.

2. Equipment Monitoring Camera Systems: This applies mainly to older equipment as newer stuff usually has this built in already. If you're not afraid to 'get dirty' and work on some farm equipment, farmer's will pay good money to add camera systems to their equipment. Things reverse cameras on grain cars to help them know what's behind them are in pretty good demand but the big one is boom cams. Boom cams are cameras that sit on the very end of the grain booms that point down and allow the equipment operator to know exactly where he's putting grain (in the event of a combine they can see where it's going in the cart, and in carts they can see where it's going in the truck) which prevents waste and ensures that one part of the cart/trailer isn't getting overloaded. Afaik there aren't any ready-made kits to buy/resell so you'd have to source parts and make your own solution but it's not terribly hard to source some heavy duty backup cameras from a car audio/entertainment distributor along with a couple of multi-source monitors. If you want to get really fancy and you know a little about electronics you can throw some relays together along with a couple sensors and get the video to auto-switch.

3. Security Camera Systems: Not strictly computer tech but security camera and dvr/nvr systems are popular among farmers who want to keep an eye on the place. You'd be surprised what people steal from farm places. Things like fuel from the fuel drums, fertilizer, even seed if it's left exposed. Can also be used to monitor livestock in the barns (especially useful during calving season) which is convenient.


As far as software and stuff goes though, most of that is already done by big corps who don't do reseller programs (unless you're an equipment dealer) so you probably won't make much inroads there. Otherwise, talk to some farmers and see what you might be able to offer them. If you can afford it and nobody in your area is doing it already, get a drone and do photogrammetry maps of their fields using those special IR cameras (I think they're IR). Farmers love data and usually won't bat an eye at spending a couple hundred dollars on a flyover if it means they can potentially add a few extra bushels an acre to their harvest.
 
If you can afford it and nobody in your area is doing it already, get a drone and do photogrammetry maps of their fields using those special IR cameras (I think they're IR). Farmers love data and usually won't bat an eye at spending a couple hundred dollars on a flyover if it means they can potentially add a few extra bushels an acre to their harvest.

You need NIR and whatever other colour bands are used in the vegetation index you're using.
I wouldn't invest too much into this, some places get really good satellite imagery, which then gets automatically processed by a farm tech company and the farmer can just log in and look at the imagery for their fields. Not as high resolution, but a lot less labour, which makes it cheaper while still providing enough information.

Retrofitting old equipment with new tech could be a money maker if you can figure it all out.
http://www.isoblue.org/

You could also roll your own bin temperature sensors as well as provide the networking. Farmers are paying $$$ for cables with $1 temperature sensors. And more for ones with humidity sensors (but those sensors are like $20 a sensor).
 
I'm amazed at how high tech some farmers can be when it comes to tractors, gps, and equipment they use in the field and have no problems with it. At least with the older generation of farmers though, there desktop pc's are far from high tech. Usually 10+ years old and using farming and accounting programs from the early 90's that are still dos based. Good luck finding tech support for that.

There can be a lot of money trying to get them to finally upgrade their pc and software. The problem is that those who want to retire in 5-10 years don't want to learn anything new and want to just keep doing whatever it takes to keep the old pc and software running somehow until they do retire.
 
There is a lot of changes. We support many farms. from milking palours to the farm office. just quoted for a chicken farm (6 x 16 port managed switch, point to point network and a load of Unifi's) going in all so the sheds can be connected to the could to spot issues along with a cctv system. There is work and normally good money.

On the other side I had a farm bring in a Windows 98 system they used for their accounts and we had to fix it to get a backup of the data then we sold them a nice new system.
 
I support a few farmers in the area. PC Mars is the most common software for farmers around here. Makes a nice "moo" sound when started up.

Farmers are typically very good clients, or poor clients. You get the ones who hate technology, and want to spend as little as possible. Then you have the ones who want to embrace it and learn it and spend the money. They are typically good clients.

The only downfall is the lack of high speed internet. Many are on DSL or wireless. Good luck downloading something there.

But I echo @MichaelBits . Backups are extremely important, so sell them on the full managed solution of backup and antivirus.
 
Thank you, everyone, for your responses. I truly appreciate it. I will begin formulating a marketing strategy and see if I can't get some nice Farm clients!
 
I support a few farmers in the area. PC Mars is the most common software for farmers around here. Makes a nice "moo" sound when started up.

Nojoke: I've had farmer's tell me they went with that software just because of that damn mooing. I thought they were kidding at first...


Also, the other one I see quite a bit of around here is Apex. It's a yield mapping software distributed by John Deere. Most common question I get regarding both programs though are backing up and/or transferring the data they generate so there's a nice niche you can usually help with.
 
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They can be good clients...so many people think they'll be low budget clients, some are far from that.
*Some have needs like some fun point to point wireless projects to light up buildings around the farm
*They run computers...sometimes quite a few of them. We have a dairy farm client that has a half dozen computers there and a little server. So recurring revenue for offsite backup too.
And all the other usual MSP stuff, Office 365 subscriptions, etc.
 
That is a great idea!
Yup, not so easy (or cheap) to implement though, and has been a long process for us to offer the coverage area we do. We have towers covering almost 3 counties around here now... we have lots of towers... The owners have been building that side of the business for years.
 
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