The farming collective is using big data to empower independent growers and fight Big Ag.
Independent farmers face a serious silo problem. It’s hard to know which seeds grow best (or even what to pay for them—same with fertilizer and chemicals) when you’re the only operation for miles. So the three-year-old Farmers Business Network empowers growers to harvest each other’s information. Big Ag may be consolidating, but FBN “is reinventing the farm economy” to fight back, says cofounder Charles Baron. The service aggregates and anonymizes data—everything from seed and soil types to elevation and weather patterns—to create a crowdsourced database that eliminates guesswork.
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