{"id":640089,"date":"2013-01-25T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T01:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=604727"},"modified":"2013-01-25T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2013-01-26T01:33:09","slug":"old-mcdonald-had-an-app-farmlogs-lands-1m-to-modernize-farm-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/640089","title":{"rendered":"Old McDonald had an app: FarmLogs lands $1M to modernize farm management"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are apps that cater to salesmen, to cooks, to contractors and to stockbrokers. Why not an app for farmers? FarmLogs<\/a> — a Y Combinator grad relocated to Ann Arbor, Mich. — has raised $1 million to invest in its digital management platform for farmers \u2013 and by farmers I mean the ones out of Steinbeck novels<\/a>, not the ones on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FarmLogs has designed software-as-a-service platform that helps small growers plan, manage and analyze their agricultural operations with the aim of maximizing crop yield and therefore profits. FarmLogs will track inventory, forecast profits, and digitize paperwork. It even follows the weather. The software is hosted in the cloud, which subscribers can access through an Android app, an HTML app optimized for the iPhone and iPad or a standard web browser.<\/p>\n

Crain\u2019s Detroit Business has an excellent description<\/a> of just how sophisticated FarmLogs\u2019 software is:<\/p>\n

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According to [CEO and co-founder Jesse] Vollmar, a midsize farm of 3,000 acres might have 60 separate fields, which can get complicated when it comes to keeping track of what needs to be tilled, watered, planted, fertilized, sprayed or harvested.<\/p>\n

FarmLogs does that, with color-coded calendars for each bit of the mosaic that makes up the Google Earth image of a decent-size farm.<\/p>\n

FarmLogs has hourly weather forecasts so farmers can plan when to get in or get out of fields. It tells them the price all the area grain elevators are paying for various grains, as well as prices at the\u00a0Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It has video feeds of various experts at the\u00a0Chicago Board of Trade\u00a0talking on issues of the day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The $1 million round was led by Chicago\u2019s Hyde Park Ventures and Ann Arbor\u2019s Huron River Ventures with Hyde Park Angels, Silicon Badia Ventures, First-Step Fund and angel investors also participating. According to Crain\u2019s, that includes the $245,000 in seed funding it raised from Silcon Valley\u2019s Start Fund\u00a0and Andreesson Horowitz.<\/p>\n

\"FarmLogs<\/a>While farming might seem like an odd place for tech investment, FarmLogs points out<\/a> that agriculture employs 36 percent of the global workforce. Big agribusiness companies like Cargill and ConAgra Foods, being gigantic corporations, have access to technology that not only engineers their food products but streamlines their business operations. Smaller farmers, though, don\u2019t have access to such resources.<\/p>\n

An emerging sector of startups is starting to feed that small farm base. For instance, New York City\u2019s FarmersWeb<\/a> has built an online e-commerce platform that links small growers and meat producers<\/a> to local restaurants, grocery stores, institutional kitchens and wholesalers.<\/p>\n

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There are apps that cater to salesmen, to cooks, to contractors and to stockbrokers. Why not an app for farmers? FarmLogs — a Y Combinator grad relocated to Ann Arbor, Mich. — has raised $1 million to invest in its digital management platform for farmers \u2013 and by farmers I mean the ones out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7415,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7415"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}