Blog: Imagining Tomorrow's Agriculture

08 June 2011

In the latest blog of Matija Kopic a young entrepreneur from Osijek, Croatia, who is very passionate about agricultural IT we read: "Sadly, agriculture isn't stepping up to the challenge of becoming a true internet hero like others. Social networking, location services, media apps, finances, on-line sales, ERP, CRM, collaboration... Do you feel something is missing? Oh yes, we do. We are thinking about that really hard. Every day. While some industries are leading the way in exploring the endless possibilities of internet-driven new business paradigms, agriculture stays behind. It's a pretty shy industry, and by now, you must have figured that we're here to turn the tide.

We estimate that farming is some 6-7 years behind other industries in the terms of IT acceptance and usage of internet. Yet, things are changing since social networking technologies have made farmers more 'internet aware'. There are approximately 163 million farmers out there connected to the internet in the English speaking countries of the world. The number increases rapidly, by the rate of 8 % per year (average from 2005-2010 period). While the number of farmers in the world declines (look at the Clark's Sector Model on the picture), there are more than 78 million new mouths to feed on the globe every year, on fewer fields than ever. That means farmers need to become more efficient in exploiting resources they have."

The youngster has decided to go offering integrated internet agriculture services by Farmeron, which is an online tool for farmers to manage their production data completely online and for free. So they are making a ASP.NET web app which he says will allow farmers across the world:

• to run their real farming businesses online (web-based farm data management system),
• to make better decisions through farming intelligence components (this one rocks),
  
• to find better market deals for ag production inputs (B2B),
• to share and collaborate with other farmers out there.

The estimated launch is October 2011. This initiative won a Microsoft ISV 2011 Award for most innovative software solution in Croatia. Have a look at the pre-beta splash that is available on their website. Reactions to their initiative can be send to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and we will post it as a comment on our CAPIGI website and LinkedIn group.