Farmer turned Software Engineer Ideas

[genkifire]

Hi Guys! I grew up farming and ended up teaching myself to code on youtube and got a software engineer job that is my current 9 to 5. I have a passive income in a POD Etsy business (I know this isn't fastlane but it covers my grocery bills). I also freelance as a software engineer on the side specializing in agtech and working with ag businesses. My why is I want to be able to spend time with my family and get my family to get off the farm so they're not working 90 hour work weeks during the summer and I'm ready to break free from corporate. My value background is in the ag industry and software/tech industry. I want to bring value to the ag industry, and consumers with my unique background in ag/tech. I have some ideas to turn my dream life into a reality and I want to get honest feedback.

• Aggregator for Farmers/Agribusiness People with commodities they are in business in, growing degree days, weather, and news curated to their personal needs
• Turo for farm equipment and heavy machinery
• Labor sharing for farmers. Theres a huge labor issue in ag. I'm thinking of making a platform where people looking for work can post and farmers looking for workers can hire for seasonal or just a one-time job. This can be for H2As, migrant, high school kids, farmers, corporate farms etc.
• Ag influencer platform that connects farm brands to ag influencers or people w a farm audience
• Connecting small hobby farmers to manufacturers/wholesalers/restauraunts looking to stamp "locally sourced" on products to consumers

I'm open to ideas as well. Thanks!

 

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[Filippos]

• Labor sharing for farmers. Theres a huge labor issue in ag. I'm thinking of making a platform where people looking for work can post and farmers looking for workers can hire for seasonal or just a one-time job. This can be for H2As, migrant, high school kids, farmers, corporate farms etc.

this will be very helpful for seasonal workforce, a perfect example is the sudden peak in labor all asparagus farmers have in Germany
I would use that in the offer of such a platform to attract farmers, because they really need help with this

another idea would be to create tools that reduce the manual effort or speed it up or make the task easier for people who have no experience in farming
one of the biggest problems of farmers in Germany is that there is a lot of low budget workforce asking them for a job, but only for a short period of time, so no farmer has the motivation to teach people if they are going to leave anyways in a few months

 

[genkifire]

this will be very helpful for seasonal workforce, a perfect example is the sudden peak in labor all asparagus farmers have in Germany
I would use that in the offer of such a platform to attract farmers, because they really need help with this

another idea would be to create tools that reduce the manual effort or speed it up or make the task easier for people who have no experience in farming
one of the biggest problems of farmers in Germany is that there is a lot of low budget workforce asking them for a job, but only for a short period of time, so no farmer has the motivation to teach people if they are going to leave anyways in a few months

Thank you for responding all the way from Germany! I guess I was thinking too small believing this was a USA problem.
It feels good to know this is an issue across the pond. I like the idea of speeding up learning. I've found most success in doing video training but it could be better. Thank you for your insight about the issues of training people and manual effort. I will be on the lookout this season when I farm with my family for the manual effort issues and the problems of inconsistencies it causes. I also noticed its hard relaying what tasks need to be done on the farm.

 

[genkifire]

Hi Guys! I grew up farming and ended up teaching myself to code on youtube and got a software engineer job that is my current 9 to 5. I have a passive income in a POD Etsy business (I know this isn't fastlane but it covers my grocery bills). I also freelance as a software engineer on the side specializing in agtech and working with ag businesses. My why is I want to be able to spend time with my family and get my family to get off the farm so they're not working 90 hour work weeks during the summer and I'm ready to break free from corporate. My value background is in the ag industry and software/tech industry. I want to bring value to the ag industry, and consumers with my unique background in ag/tech. I have some ideas to turn my dream life into a reality and I want to get honest feedback.

• Aggregator for Farmers/Agribusiness People with commodities they are in business in, growing degree days, weather, and news curated to their personal needs
• Turo for farm equipment and heavy machinery
• Labor sharing for farmers. Theres a huge labor issue in ag. I'm thinking of making a platform where people looking for work can post and farmers looking for workers can hire for seasonal or just a one-time job. This can be for H2As, migrant, high school kids, farmers, corporate farms etc.
• Ag influencer platform that connects farm brands to ag influencers or people w a farm audience
• Connecting small hobby farmers to manufacturers/wholesalers/restauraunts looking to stamp "locally sourced" on products to consumers

I'm open to ideas as well. Thanks!

What I've done so far for my Ag Labor Issue Solution:

• I picked out a name that is direct and to the point of what this platform does
• I've sent a survey out to 1000s of farmers in my network across the world to gain feedback/insights and have a nice random prize with a couple of winners to pick out once my survey closes
• Built a prototype on Figma and am finding farmers in my network to test the prototype for both mobile and web
• Listened to people in my network that face this labor issue and have seen some common themes:
  • Paying people, a lot of farms don't get payment consistently and have expressed delayed payment as a need
  • Finding people with chemical and CDL licensing
  • Some expressed they wish that for a day they could take their hay baler or chopper and go make extra money on a weekend especially part-time farmers

My Next Action Steps:

1. Build out more of the prototype
2. Get my wireframe confirmed
3. Build out my wireframe with tailwind CSS
4. Leverage supabase and react
5. Get feedback from my network of software engineers smarter than me on building this efficiently
6. Build my backend
7. Work with my business partner at my freelance firm I created who has the strong background in writing ag copy to write the copy for the app and word everything correctly
8. Test new ideas with prototype and gain feedback from users and work in suggestions or anything that makes it hard to use
9. Build my test, dev, and prod environments
10. Push the prod environment
11. Get some test users
12. Release to the public
13. Promote on social media and to our network of thousands of farmers/ag business professionals
14. Take this to agtech, farm bureau, and other pitch competitions
15. Pitch to investors
16. Continue building/improving
17. Eventually exit by selling this tech

 

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[Tau Ceti]

There is a guy who does a little bit what you want to do. I follow him on Twitter.

That's his website.

Home

Ranching & outdoor focused job board operating since 1998. All listings are hand-verified and curated. USA based. Independently owned & operated.

www.ranchwork.com

Very niche but he makes a killing with it.

 

[Tau Ceti]

What I've done so far for my Ag Labor Issue Solution:

• I picked out a name that is direct and to the point of what this platform does
• I've sent a survey out to 1000s of farmers in my network across the world to gain feedback/insights and have a nice random prize with a couple of winners to pick out once my survey closes
• Built a prototype on Figma and am finding farmers in my network to test the prototype for both mobile and web
• Listened to people in my network that face this labor issue and have seen some common themes:
  • Paying people, a lot of farms don't get payment consistently and have expressed delayed payment as a need
  • Finding people with chemical and CDL licensing
  • Some expressed they wish that for a day they could take their hay baler or chopper and go make extra money on a weekend especially part-time farmers

My Next Action Steps:

1. Build out more of the prototype
2. Get my wireframe confirmed
3. Build out my wireframe with tailwind CSS
4. Leverage supabase and react
5. Get feedback from my network of software engineers smarter than me on building this efficiently
6. Build my backend
7. Work with my business partner at my freelance firm I created who has the strong background in writing ag copy to write the copy for the app and word everything correctly
8. Test new ideas with prototype and gain feedback from users and work in suggestions or anything that makes it hard to use
9. Build my test, dev, and prod environments
10. Push the prod environment
11. Get some test users
12. Release to the public
13. Promote on social media and to our network of thousands of farmers/ag business professionals
14. Take this to agtech, farm bureau, and other pitch competitions
15. Pitch to investors
16. Continue building/improving
17. Eventually exit by selling this tech

IMHO, you don't need test,dev and production envs.

You need your local copy and production. No need for more at this stage.
You also don't need a backend if you use supabase. Supabase is your backend already.

Tailwind is great choice but i were you i would just buy a premium template and build from there its pretty hard to build something from scratch that looks decent.

Keep everything simple and use Nextjs because pure React is not SEO friendly so NextJs with server side rendered pages is the way to go.

I don't think you need wireframes either. Just code and ship and iterate on the design. With tailwind it's very easy and fast as well.

Don't worry about building user accounts and pretty emails either. At least for now.

 

[genkifire]

IMHO, you don't need test,dev and production envs.

You need your local copy and production. No need for more at this stage.
You also don't need a backend if you use supabase. Supabase is your backend already.

Tailwind is great choice but i were you i would just buy a premium template and build from there its pretty hard to build something from scratch that looks decent.

Keep everything simple and use Nextjs because pure React is not SEO friendly so NextJs with server side rendered pages is the way to go.

I don't think you need wireframes either. Just code and ship and iterate on the design. With tailwind it's very easy and fast as well.

Don't worry about building user accounts and pretty emails either. At least for now.

Thank you so much for your feedback! I want to make this a mobile app too. How can I make this so this is friendly for mobile first? Based off feedback I got everyone says the reason they don't use the ranchwork.com site is because of it not being mobile friendly and not being inclusive to dairy, fruit, grain, and other types of ag work.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Thank you so much for your feedback! I want to make this a mobile app too. How can I make this so this is friendly for mobile first? Based off feedback I got everyone says the reason they don't use the ranchwork.com site is because of it not being mobile friendly and not being inclusive to dairy, fruit, grain, and other types of ag work.

To make a site mobile friendly you have to start with the mobile design first and then tackle the larger screens.
There are way to make your website turn into a mobile application but I don't think you should worry about that now.

Just make it mobile friendly first. Start with designing with tailwind a page that looks good on phones , then update it using breakpoints to make it look good on desktop, laptop and ipads.

Its all explained in the Tailwind docs: Responsive Design - Tailwind CSS

 

[genkifire]

To make a site mobile friendly you have to start with the mobile design first and then tackle the larger screens.
There are way to make your website turn into a mobile application but I don't think you should worry about that now.

Just make it mobile friendly first. Start with designing with tailwind a page that looks good on phones , then update it using breakpoints to make it look good on desktop, laptop and ipads.

Its all explained in the Tailwind docs: Responsive Design - Tailwind CSS

Thank you its sounding like getting a template and working off the template would be the best option for me. I appreciate it!

 

[Tau Ceti]

A good starter repo for a site is this one: GitHub - Etheonor/supanextail

It combines supabase, nextJs and tailwind.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

And it's free. But may be slightly out of date.

 

[genkifire]

A good starter repo for a site is this one: GitHub - Etheonor/supanextail

It combines supabase, nextJs and tailwind.

Thank you for the github! I cloned this locally.

 

[alexlong]

I'm curious to hear any updates

 

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