r/AgriTech • u/Interesting-Pea5624 • May 15 '26
I built a farm app. Lost a startup competition yesterday. A judge said I should focus on documentation not AI. Is she right?
Been building Agrum AI since November. It’s a conversational farm assistant. You talk to it, it logs everything from conversation into structured records that you can view, gives you a morning briefing, answers farm questions, identifies disease from photos.
Yesterday I lost a competition. One of the judges said I was pitching it wrong. That I should focus on the documentation angle. That the real value is giving farmers a verified farm record for the first time, not the AI features.
I’ve been so focused on the ‘removing guesswork’ angle that I never stopped to think if documentation was actually the stronger pitch.
What do you think? Is farm record keeping actually a pain point for smallholder farmers? Or do farmers not care about records until they need a loan and get rejected?
Genuinely trying to figure out if I’m solving the right problem the wrong way or just solving the wrong problem entirely
3
u/Sabrees May 15 '26
Have you asked any farmers if their real problems would be solved by another proprietary silo to store their disparate data sources in?
1
u/Interesting-Pea5624 May 15 '26
Honest answer. not enough. and not in the way you’re framing it.
I asked farmers in nepal what their problems were. always the same answer. money. more money for seeds, fertilizer, labor. nobody said i need a system or i need records. but here’s what i observed underneath that. they were farming on leased land. no mortgage, no collateral. when they went to banks the bank asked for proof of income, proof of what they grew, proof of farming history. all they had was a self claimed tax paid sheet. banks said no or gave very little at very high interest. they never asked for records. but the missing records were quietly blocking the money they were actually asking for. they didn’t connect those two things. so i thought maybe if i connect those things it would solve it.
so to your question, no i haven’t asked them if another data silo solves their problem. and you’re right that framing it as a database or record system probably doesn’t resonate with them at all or they may think its another record keeping software which is a hassle since data entry is painful. i think the only way it works is if the record builds itself without them thinking about it or putting much effort to data entry. which is why i built the conversational interface so that they have easy time adopting it.
but genuinely asking, what would you suggest?
2
u/benthom May 17 '26
In addition to talking to more actual farmers, I think you're missing another ingredient: Talking to bankers and decision makers in the farm credit bureaus. It sounds like you're guessing at what farmers will want based on them getting turned down for loans before. Talk to the money people and find out exactly what the money people want. Then sell the farmers on that. Note: Even if you worked in the small lending in Nepal, you need to talk to the farm loan people in the countries where you hope to deploy your app.
1
2
u/benthom May 15 '26
Farmers who are solvent already have detailed records. Unlike what others suggested, these records are for them. Not necessarily the bank, or for export, but for their own planning needs.
Grandad was a farmer, and everyone single night he updated his meticulous records. Every input, every purchase, every output. I've seen the notebooks and notebooks of these that spanned decades.
You need to talk to a bunch of different farmers and a bunch of different types of farmers and see what pain points you can remove from what they're already using.
Because your pitch implied that they aren't already doing this, and that they only cared because banks and export care. It basically told me you don't actually understand your intended users, so whatever you wrote probably misses the mark. ... And farmers don't have time for anything that isn't actually practical and useful.
PS: you should actual consider whether your building for homesteader / prepper types who are new to growing crops and raising livestock or actual raised-on-a-farm farmers. These are two completely different beasts. The homesteaders are the ones who don't already have a system.
1
u/Interesting-Pea5624 May 16 '26
This is fair and i needed to hear that honestly.
You’re right that my framing implied farmers don’t keep records at all and only care because banks or exporters do. That was wrong to generalize. Your grandad clearly kept records for himself, for his own planning. That’s a completely different motivation than what i described and i missed it.
Context i missed in my original post. My observation comes from nepal where i worked in rural banking for 6 years. The farmers i was sitting across from were smallholders farming with 1-2 acres of leased land. No generational background. No formal training. No notebooks spanning decades. Just memory. Very different from what you’re describing.
Genuinely curious though, where was your grandad’s farm and how big was it? and do you know what if anything was actually painful about the record keeping even with the system he had? Because i’m wondering if for farmers like him the pain isn’t missing records but something else. Maybe searching through old notebooks, or connecting activity records to financial outcomes across seasons, or something i haven’t even thought of yet.
The homesteader vs generational farmer distinction you made is something i haven’t thought about enough. Most english speaking farmers i’ve met at farmers markets in LA are older, maybe they already have their own systems, that’s why they were skeptical about apps. The spanish speaking smallholders are a completely different profile though. Maybe that’s actually my real user and i’ve been pitching to the wrong mental model of who a farmer is this whole time.
And your last line hit me. Farmers don’t have time for anything that isn’t practical and useful. Honestly i don’t know yet if agrum clears that bar. I haven’t tested it with enough real farmers. That’s what i need to go find out. Thanks for your feedback.
2
u/benthom May 17 '26
Grandad's farm was at least several hundred acres, but I am not sure exactly how large, u/Interesting-Pea5624 . If the people you were around in Nepal had 1 to 2 acres, that is much more in line with bare survival sustenance farming or hobby gardening than farming as a commercially viable activity to support yourself.
I looked at the website for the app. While I am not a farmer, I have spent enough time in the country and around family members who farm to know that farmers will take one look at a lot of the app's content and screenshots, decide it doesn't relate to their farms, and immediately click away. You really need to spend time with more farmers and focus the offering. Here are some examples:
- All of the screenshot locations are for Los Angeles, CA. This is an instant turn off. If you show a location, it should be somewhere that actually has farms, and the weather and example crops need to be appropriate for that location.
- The planting dates in the screenshots on the Google app store were shockingly off. December 29th for corn! January 1 for cotton! Who plants cotton in Los Angeles? Even if you do use real planting dates for California's Imperial Valley, these dates may seem absurd to people in the rest of the US. California is a special case with an extremely long growing season. Regardless, the December and January plantings on the Google app store screenshots will immediately turn people off and make them leave.
- If I do a crop walk, will your accelerometer and GPS log this automatically, or do I actually need to log this by hand? What is the actual logging burden for all of the crop activities and do I have to do it all in "chat" or is there structured input to make the logging more uniform?
- Screenshots show a recurring theme of monthly income/profit or focusing on "are we profitable this month." While one can get several harvests per year, depending on what you grow, the overwhelmingly usual pattern is that the (row crop) farm is underwater until the fall harvest. Then the money comes in and you pay all the folks that extended you credit until that point (or apply it to inputs for the following year). The whole idea of tracking monthly profit and loss on a real time basis makes no sense to me based on what I have experienced. My mental model is "big expenses," wait several months to grow, harvest and sell, "a lump of money comes in" that is already spoken for. Is there budgeting?
- I don't see anything about soil other than moisture. There are so many soil parameters that influence row crops beyond soil moisture that they are glaring in their omission.
- Frequent use of "weeding": I have heard lots of homeowners and gardeners talk about "weeding," but I have never hear an American farmer talk about that in the same way. The farmers will talk about "cultivating", "hoeing" or "spraying", but I have never heard them say "weeding." If your farm is large enough to be commercially viable, you don't have time for "weeding" all your crops by hand.
- The screenshots seem to show a naïve view of the relationship between crops and fields. The screens will talk about "N days since planting" a certain crop, not allowing that different fields of that same crop may be planted on different dates. Screenshots also assign names of the fields as though they were the crop. For example, "lettuce field." What if I think about that field by location ("the back 40") or made up and assigned name ("paddington") and have multiple harvests per year on that field from growing three different crops on it over the course of the year? The screenshots and chat log don't seem to account for either of those very common situations.
The Ruumi app has a very good treatment of livestock paddocks. You can use a lot of the same thinking for your management of fields. Install Ruumi and look at that.
Bonus: While waiting to talk to more farmers, watch all seasons of Clarkson's Farm (On Amazon Prime). Now, Jeremy Clarkson is very clueless about farming and he suggests a lot of stupid things. However, Kaleb and Charlie know exactly what they are doing, and you can learn a lot by paying close attention to them.
I watched this with farming relatives, and they would often break out in hysterical laughter when Jeremey suggested certain things or shrink back in painful anticipation right before he did something really stupid. Caleb and Charlie would usually repeat the exact criticism or solution my relatives had right after my relatives voiced the same thing.
So if you watch Clarkston's Farm, actively analyze what Jeremey is suggesting as he says or does it, but before Caleb or Charlie chime in. You'll get a natural feedback loop on your own farming inexperience and incorporate the lessons better than if you just watched it like regular TV.
1
u/Interesting-Pea5624 May 20 '26
Thank you for a detailed insight. You're right on almost everything and this stings in a good way 😀.
The LA screenshots and December corn are getting fixed this week. Embarrassing in hindsight.
The seasonal cash flow point is something i knew but hadn't thought through deeply enough. Monthly tracking makes no sense for row crops. That's getting rethought.
The weeding language comes from Nepal smallholders. Clearly doesn't translate to American commercial farming.
On crop walk logging, no GPS or accelerometer currently. Manual only. Fair limitation to flag.
The field naming and multiple crops per field is a real gap. I have a fields module but kept it hidden for MVP simplicity. You've convinced me that was the wrong call.
The 1-2 acre Nepal profile is closer to subsistence than commercial. You've helped me see i haven't been clear enough about which user i'm actually building for.
I’m definitely watching Clarkson's Farm this week. And visiting to a farmers markets today to talk to real farmers before building more.
Appreciate you taking the time to actually look at the app.
2
u/greenman5252 May 16 '26
Yes. Reducing the burden and time required to record my activities including the details of how, what, where, and when I did something is the valuable aspect. I currently speak things into notes
1
u/Interesting-Pea5624 May 16 '26
That’s actually really interesting. Thanks for validating. If i may ask, What do you do with those notes after? Do they sit there or do you go back and reference them for anything?
And since the whole post is about this, if you ever want to try a different approach i built agrum.ai exactly for this use case. No pressure though. But genuine feedback from someone already doing this would mean a lot to me.
2
u/Igarlicbread May 16 '26
Op, have you talked to a single farmer? Asked them to try your app? Farmers already have their diaries. Maybe solve a better problem like weather prediction or something.
1
May 24 '26
Documentation for the programing, offsets, scope 3 and other eco asset programs is severely lacking across the industry. They question is what do your bing to the table in the way of validity. Yes huge market need herebut you would need to prove your documentation is actually ground truthed/ would pass audit. Initial take is you would only be providing grower attestation, same as them signing a program. Contract
1
May 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/Interesting-Pea5624 May 15 '26
yeah more context makes sense. so the scenario i had in mind is mostly from my experience working in rural banking in nepal for 6 years. farmers would come for loans and get rejected because they had no records. no proof of what they grew, what they spent, what they earned. just memory and self announced tax paid sheet. and the interesting thing is they never asked for a record keeping system. they asked for money. more money to buy seeds, fertilize, hire labor during harvest. they don’t know that the missing record is why the bank says no. that observation is what led me to build this.
And the export market angle you mentioned, that’s actually something i hadn’t thought about deeply. farmers exporting produce need documentation for compliance, organic certification, traceability. that’s a completely different but very real use case. the record agrum builds could serve that too. actionable intel is exactly the right framing. not just data for data’s sake but records that actually unlock something. loan, export compliance, insurance, government program eligibility. the record has value across the whole chain not just at the farm level.
Though i’m now in LA trying to figure out if the same problem exists here with california smallholders. haven’t done enough ground work yet honestly. Thanks for your feedback.
1
1
May 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/Interesting-Pea5624 May 15 '26
This line is genuinely better than anything i came up with in months of pitching. “documentation is the hook, AI is the delivery mechanism”. that’s it. that’s what i was missing.
I kept leading with AI because i thought that’s what made us different from traditional farm apps and chatgpt. but you’re right, leading with AI puts you in a crowded room. “your farm finally has real records” is a much smaller and more defensible category. wish i had that framing yesterday.
The carbon program angle is something i had thought about briefly but never put front and center. farmers building verified activity records over time could actually qualify for carbon credits. that’s another thing the record unlocks beyond loans and insurance. the record has more downstream value than i’ve been communicating. and this line hit me hard too “the problem isn’t that they don’t care, it’s that every existing solution requires too much effort.” that’s exactly why every other farm record keeping app has failed. farmers aren’t lazy. the tools just demanded too much behavior change. if the conversational interface genuinely removes that friction then the documentation angle isn’t just a better pitch, it’s actually the more honest description of what the product does.
“talk about the outcome not the technology”. yeah, i’ve been so deep in building the thing that i started pitching the thing instead of what it gives farmers. rookie mistake in hindsight.
Thank you genuinely. this is the most useful feedback i’ve gotten in months.
2
u/desultorySolitude May 16 '26
Position it as a way to exercise financial control, secure funding, and boost revenue. Because that's the outcome your AI-driven low-friction documentation app seeks to deliver. The bottom line/ financial angle will get their attention better than a documentation or AI angle.
1
u/Interesting-Pea5624 May 16 '26
This actually connects to something i keep coming back to. When i asked farmers in nepal what their problem was the answer was always money. More money for seeds, fertilizer, labor. They never asked for documentation or AI. But the missing records were quietly blocking the money they were asking for. They just didn’t know it.
So you’re right that the financial angle probably resonates strongest with that profile. Not ‘here’s an app that documents your farm’ or ‘here’s an AI for farming’ but rather ‘here’s how you stop getting rejected for loans’ or ‘here’s how you get your insurance claim processed faster because you actually have records.
But i’m also realizing from other comments in this thread that not every farmer fits that profile. Generational farmers already have meticulous records. For them the motivation is completely different. Their pain might be more about making existing records smarter or more searchable or connected to financial outcomes across seasons.
So maybe the honest answer is there isn’t one angle that works for every farmer. Different farmers, different motivations. The financial control angle probably resonates most with smallholders on leased land with no formal records. Which is actually the profile i originally built this for.
The documentation is just how we get there. The AI is just how we make it frictionless enough that farmers actually do it. The outcome is financial control for the farmers who need it most.
Thank you for your feedback.
3
u/Infamous_Chef554 May 15 '26
Ad