Venture capitalists find rising digitized market in rural America via data-loving farmers

Technology investors are discovering a new and largely untapped market: farmers in heartland America eager to fly drones, employ robots and crunch big data to boost their business. In 2017, tech startups in the agriculture sphere raised $670 million to develop software management, big data analytics, automated equipment and other cutting-edge tools that help farmers grow crops with scientific precision, AgFunder reported. Agriculture is one of the last major sectors to experience the digital revolution and it’s a market ripe for growth. New technology allows farmers to manage their fields down to the square foot – tracking plant health, soil moisture and estimated profit in real-time. That requires advanced software, sensors and state-of-the-art imaging technology. To meet such needs, investors raised more money for ag tech startups in 2017 than during the previous two years combined. If on-farm machine learning and satellite imaging come to scale, the improvements to agriculture’s climate and water impacts would be tremendous. Read more