> But there's more to agtech than driving a tractor around, a lot of what these big integrated systems do (at the high end) is very data driven -- determining where and how to plant, irrigate, fertilize, etc.

How difficult is this to implement outside of big ag-tech? I feel that a community of experienced farmers and programmers (or programmer-farmers) could tackle this.

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tempest_ 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It really depends.

The bigger agcorps have tones of integration.

The machine, from tractor to combine and everything in between often feeds data together to produce a holistic understanding.

Things like - How much fuel was used - Where your tractors and sprayers drove - Soil samples and content - How and where every bit of chemical and fertilizer was applied - What weather hit your field - How much and and the moisture content of every bit of the field you harvested

It goes on an on.

	▲	worik 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The bigger agcorps have tones of integration. Yes, but how useful is the integration? The sprayers/spreaders can be connected cheap computer to achieve most of what you describe. I used to do literally that but in aircraft. Must be easier and cheaper in tractors

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lallysingh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think this has all suddenly shifted with high-quality programming AIs available. How difficult is this to implement with Claude?

	▲	AngryData 29 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Farmers would be foolish to rely on an LLM because farming margins are too low to makeup for even a small quick mistake. Many farms will profit 1% on investment over 1-2 decades, although year to year yield can vary 30%.
	▲	kube-system 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The software is certainly easier to build, but there's a lot of hardware involved here beyond the tractor. Claude is not necessarily going to make it easier to do soil sampling or measuring field conditions or yield outputs.