I have about 2 years of ag experience… - farming is expensive and highly variable margin year to year, which makes it hard to justify investing in tech unless the payoff is very obvious / quick. - the tech that does exist isn’t standardized. Got a pivot from Zimmatic and one from Valley? 2 separate apps and whatnot. And the price to get a cell modem board for it is like $1500 + a subscription. - much of the smart field monitoring stuff is subscription based; you can’t own it, and it’s not open. - integrating and using all this stuff requires some tech skills, the average age of a farmer is in their 60s, and not all of them are tech savvy (many are).
On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 4:45 AM Dave Taht via Starlink < starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote: > (I am hoping others on this list with real-world AG experience can > chime in? I enjoy realworld stories about present solutions and pain > points[2]) > > I have often been dubious of the 5g hope to dominate any major > component of a smart ag architecture except perhaps FWA, (where > starlink is poised and people also want to run fiber) to give it a > good run for the money- 5g chips are too big, too hard to power, and > too complex, and come with a monthly billing model and other > centralized requirements that make organic evolution and solid support > in remote environments dicy and expensive. > > I freely concede that I may be wrong, that with sufficient subsidies, > we will end up hanging the equivalent of a cellphone off of every > suitably large piece of gear and ship all the data up to the cloud, > rather than pre-process locally. Certainly the benefits of gps and > drones are being shown every day, along with satellite weather and > other forms of satellite analysis. [1] > > But the 5g sensor market? No. Nowadays smart sensors are easily > constructed out of wifi devices such as these which cost 5 dollars or > less: > > > https://www.amazon.com/DORHEA-Development-Microcontroller-NodeMCU-32S-ESP-WROOM-32/dp/B086MJGFVV/ref=asc_df_B086MJGFVV/ > > And the more meshy LoRA stuff now has much better range (4 miles), at > low complexity and power also. > > then there are things like amazon sidewalk: > https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=21328123011 > > And airtags. > > [1] On the other hand rigorous analysis of the food we produce has > recently discovered a marked decline in the percentage of nutritious > minerals over the past 100 years. Please see: > > https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09637486.2021.1981831 > > How smart is that? > > [2] Massive subsidy and diversion of river resources to the water > hungry california almond industry during the last 7 years of drought > led to the cancellation of the salmon fishing season last year. > > You should hear some of the invective that I used to hear aimed at > "the f-ing vegetarians" along the docks I frequent in half moon bay. > That I used to hear, anyway, The docks are eerily silent, the workers > at other jobs, the boats not going out for anything except crab and > squid. > > How smart is that? The California water table is a disaster, too. I > vastly prefer salmon to almonds personally.... > > I guess a meta point is easily gathering tactical data is one thing, > sharing it sanely another, deciding on how to use it strategically, > another. > > -- > :( My old R&D campus is up for sale: https://tinyurl.com/yurtlab > Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos > _______________________________________________ > Starlink mailing list > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink >
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