Why Farmers Business Network Is One Of The Most Innovative Companies Of 2017

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.

To read the full arti­cle, vis­it Fast Com­pa­ny.