February 23rd - 2nd Edition of my Imagery in Ag weekly series
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Opening thoughts for the week
To start, thank you all that so far have subscribed, liked, and shared my newsletter on Linkedin, Twitter, and beyond. I really really appreciate it and hope it continues. I’ve gotten many great comments and thoughts supporting this so now I just need to make sure it continues. Pressure is on I guess.
For this week I became stuck on what I should highlight as there is a backlog to go through. Also, I don’t want to over do it as the problem is EO and Ag doesn’t make a huge splashed every week typically. While this time of year usually does produce some good “hits” with partnerships and news throughout Ag, I’m going to highlight something pretty big yet ongoing that needs to be talked about. It’s been in the news plenty and has been at a plethora of Ag/Space conferences/meetings talking about the future and possibilities. It has controlled the narrative almost of where we are at today in regards to EO and AG even in their separate realms at times. It has pushed Ag towards many changes with positive and negative results.
Something that has impacted not only the use of imagery in Ag, but everywhere else also. It has many potential and current issues it faces via many different facets. I hope talking about it will expose the realistic view point I see and others see as well. Maybe this will help bring some consensus to what many of us overall know and what I more specifically know. So what is this thing I’m writing about in regard to EO in AG?
Planet Labs. Enjoy
News and Opinions
As I mentioned last week in my inaugural addition, there is a a lot of past material to cover. I’ll get there, but because of that and for this first “real’ edition as I mentioned above I will highlight the elephant in the room when it comes to imagery in Ag. Planet. They’ve influenced and put their foot down pretty hard into Ag, just went public (hasn’t been a fun ride so far), and now have finally opened back up to the Ag world after ending the exclusive partnership in Ag with Farmers Edge on Jan 1st, 2021. So many things to digest to say the least. I figured it might be best to blow open this top first to get it out of the way almost. Though I doubt I’ll cover every aspect at first here. Give me time please.
Below are a few examples of press and news I will highlight for this week as they pretty much set the tone for where I want to go. To continue with the Planet theme, I’ll be using them as a primer to my other pieces below from memes to past history. This will be interesting I guarantee.
Planet and Farmers Edge - This link is really just the most recent news from the two, but it’s the past that really tells the story. I almost should cover this individually as it impacted so much in the industry, but also for Planet itself. Hang on…
It started here Press sort of. Basically, a three year exclusive deal to use and distribute to others Planet Dove data to Ag in almost all regions of the world besides the UK and a few African countries if I remember correctly. The basics of the deal were not known, but having worked with Farmers Edge since their inception in 2005 with imagery up until 2011 (this is another story I’ll get to) I had some old contacts and got to know the “generics” of deal. Approx. 11 million a year for the data and more for certain analytic capabilities I heard. One rumor was that it was a 55 million dollar deal overall. In any realm, a lot of money.
The problem with this all was it almost setup Planet for disaster and inherently they just gave the keys to a group that was in competition with almost everyone else that had the potential need to use Planet data. It was like giving GM the rights to sell all the Goodyear tires to everyone who builds cars, but especially their biggest competitors Ford and Chrysler. The thing is, Planet needed this money or the hope of it to expand to other business it seemed. From what I’ve heard the main people engaged in this decision are not at Planet anymore for good reasons. I know it goes deeper than this, but that is for another day.
From the data point of view, by allowing one group to dictate the keys to the castle for Ag they never allowed others to play and test with their data which made everyone else go to other private partners (some went to Airbus, 21AT, etc...) or to free data such as Landsat, but mainly the ESA with Sentinel 2A/B. This did not go well for either party. Planet ruined their own product and setup the rest of the industry to not really care or need their data. This continues to this day to a large degree it seems.
In any regard, the exclusive ended at the beginning of 2021. In talking with Planet before this they tried to get out of the deal to great effort starting almost after the signed the deal it seemed. The issue became clear when FE started having issues getting any traction in distributing Planet data to others in Ag. Big surprise huh? This made Planet not happy and started a trend to try to see if they could get out of it. They were not successful. It also didn’t help that some of the payments that were to be made by FE to Planet were supposedly, how do I say, not meeting the needs of the contract. All in all, the relationship wasn’t great.
Going forward to 2021, it seemed their relationship went dark fast and FE preceded to make a deal with Airbus according to their 4th quarter 2020 results. Now this is odd since in trying to find the press release about it I can’t find it anywhere. There are references, but it seems just weird. It feels like they deleted that Airbus release and made others do it too. Not sure how to explain that one right now, but it doesn’t surprise me. I digress.
At the end of the day (A good ole Wade quote from FE), they made back up with Planet somehow (both out of necessity I’d say) and it makes sense as most of their products were built around it and they needed it without reworking a lot of processes. I’m sure the new deal is cheaper than the old, but nonetheless spendy I’m sure.
I could go deeper right now, but I’ll hold off until later. Overall, Planet and FE have had a weird, rocky, and positive/negative relationship. They’ve been dependent almost on each other while also making each others lives more difficult. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes, but in general they seem happy enough for now.
Planet and Corteva - This is the other big deal Planet has made with someone in Ag from the past and this linked one is just a continuation of their previous one. Their first deal actually happened right before the Farmers Edge deal so they were the only one that didn’t have to abide to their rules of exclusiveness. They didn’t have a distribution deal though like FE. Just a normal derived work product deal for their own products.
As for their deal, I’ve heard it was in the 7-8 million a year range. Again, it wouldn’t surprise me if the latest one was less, but who knows. I’m not going to get too deep into the financial aspects of all of these but the essence of what the deal represents.
What does this mean overall for Corteva? To me it really is a marketing tool with an sense of agronomic R&D. I worked with Pioneer with imagery back in the day before their Corteva name/acquisition change and from what I found is their R&D group and agronomic/sales/marketing group is entirely different. Maybe that has changed, but from what I knew then it showed me a big reason they wanted Planet data when they made the original deal. Consistent ability to push something of value to grab attention.
When you can more or less push out “daily” data showing something about your field that might show some change you can then create a new conversation each time. This is the marketing approach and one that I’m sure they are using to sell what Corteva makes the most money from, seed and chemical. So regardless of what it costs for them with Planet or any other future group the need is the same. Relentlessly pushing something of relevance out to the grower. Do some growers use the analytics for practical use like scouting and agronomic decisions? Of course. Do enough pay for their services to pay for the Planet data and systems that support it? Unlikely directly. If it did, we all would know.
The roots to this all isn’t that there isn’t value in Planet data from my perspective. It is that imagery data in Ag is actually one of the best pieces of marketing data Ag can utilize and many have never done it well. Has Corteva done it well? Hard to say, but they have a lot of smart marketing people out there and smart growers that work with them, so I assume they’ve had enough success to stay positive.
I will leave you with this illustration though comparing how they showcase Planet data to another using NDVI. This is between Sentinel and Planet, a common comparison and one that I will talk about more. Sometimes the technical specs of imagery data doesn’t really matter, it is how it’s presented visually. It’s from the same time August 15/16th of 2020 in corn. For reference Sentinel is 10m resolution, Planet is 3/5m depending on who you talk to. Now this isn’t Planet’s fault, it’s Corteva’s, or at least seems to be. I will say, I’ve seen others using Planet data showing similar results (FE at times) with their data. So that begs the questions, what is really going on? Now, the basic difference is in how they are representing NDVI values and the colors to those values by each one and the number of breaks of the values. Mainly, I don’t understand why Corteva doesn’t do a better job at this. They easily could I think.
All in all, this relationship seems stable enough and whether it is bringing value to all I guess is up to the eyes of the beholder whether grower, trusted advisor, Corteva, or Planet itself. Eyes will be watching more.
Planet buying Vandersat - This sort of came out of the blue for me. Mainly because I didn’t see Planet going vertical in Ag quite yet. The thing is, I completely understand why they did and they did it for good reasons. It will complicate some of their data sales processes and make them compete against other Ag clients, but that’s a different conversation. This will also take time to progress I think as Vandersat is fairly new to all of this.
On the Why? On the outside it looks like a simple problem they are trying to solve. “Let’s have an internal group that understands Ag enough so we can create macro project type products with our own data and sell it cheaper than anyone can afford to do themselves with our data in the first place.” This is my take on it and it’s more or less true I’d say. It’s not a bad move either. Analytics in Ag and the companies that produce them are in a weird flux right now. How, why, costs, value, and much more all play into these groups and each one does it differently. When you own your own source data you can more easily control the narrative of how your data is valuable. Smart move for Planet.
Why actually? My above point is not wrong, it is half of the story. The other half is something I started to realize, understand, and hear from my colleagues after Planet finally could open up to others in Ag after the old FE deal was done. Simply put, Planet wasn’t getting enough data buys from Agriculture. I highlighted this partially in the FE piece above, but what it really comes down to are three things: Trust in Planet data scientifically, cost, and having to re-model processes made with Sentinel with Planet.
The basics of it is, there hasn’t been enough extra value and want from growers to pay to build entirely new processes to use Planet data for their analytic processes. This does give Corteva and Farmers Edge an upper hand, but it also shows the issues they’ve had as well in making money from integrating Planet data. That is, Sentinel is good enough for most processes and it’s heavily integrated by others since they couldn’t access other data like Planet for years. It’s also free and if you look at quantity vs quality, Sentinel wins hands down. Not a question. More on this in the weeks to come.
So why Vandersat? Simple. They need a real way to make money directly from clients in Ag vs relying on others to create the value from their data. With all the carbon, environmental, sustainability stuff going around this I would say it is a good move for them and will be similar with other EO Space groups going forward. If you look at the troubles FE has had and the visual on how Corteva is showing their data to growers you’d probably be questioning things too. Now this is to say it was also partially their fault to begin with in closing off their data. Time will tell how this plays out, but be ready to see a bigger push by Planet if Ag sales of just their data comes to a stall.
Planet and Sinergise partnership - I was not really surprised by this and they already had a non-ag relationship so yeah. For you that don’t know, Sinergise is the creator of Sentinel Hub. For you that don’t know what that is, it’s one of the main distributors of ESA (European Space Agency) data. They also have the contract with the ESA to manage in some realm the data between AWS and ESA for general and direct distribution of Copernicus data aka Sentinel. They’ve done their work and do it well.
This partnership is a little different though. It is through the EU via their CAP (Common Agriculture Policy) referendum. Similar to the USDA’s Farm Program more or less I think. This deal is meant to help better showcase changes and evaluations of smaller fields specifically in Slovenia where Sinergise is located from what I read.
In the 2021 growing season, Planet is proud to have partnered with Sinergise, a geospatial information provider based in Slovenia, to deliver a powerful end-to-end solution for the Slovenian National Paying Agency (ARSKTRP).
While many AgTech companies do use Sentinel Hub to grab that data, not all do, but many do. That is big for Planet and an easier way to slowly trench their way back into Agriculture. This is also just good press and one that involves the EU government, which is well funded and very supportive of EO and Remote Sensing. More will definitely come from this.
Planet and Leaf collaboration - So this one is sort of fun and odd for me all at the same time. Here is why. I recently ended my career on good terms with Telus Agriculture where I became a part of through my previous employer called AgIntegrated which was acquired by Telus in 2020.
Anyway, one of the main things I was working on was Remote Sensing for Telus Ag (or TAG) and in relation to creating more of a central agnostic data exchange for them with imagery being a core piece. Well, while Planet is and was a key group that was wanted for integration we just weren’t there yet for timing reasons. Leaf though was and is a competitor to TAG is certain ways regarding this agnostic exchange process, hence the semi awkwardness.
Now it doesn’t really matter, but I wanted to give context. I did get the chance last week thought to talk to Bailey Stockdale who is Leaf’s Founder and CEO about this connection with Planet. What they are doing with Planet is very similar to what I was trying to do beforehand, pass through imagery providers data through a central API process that is easy for AgTech companies to integrate.
What this is important is due to a couple of standard challenges we in Ag have compared to other industries when it comes to Planet data and others for that matter. The biggest is really the restrictive licensing and the variable costs to how much data one gets. Nothing new for the general private EO industry, but with regards to Planet it can be odd because of their history in Ag. You can become a distributor of theirs, but they also can go direct to your customers via their APIs and go around you theoretically. This is a constant problem regardless, but it doesn’t make the agreements less complex.
From what I learned, it sounds like it is more of a pass through model which Planet will still have access directly to the end client (which they for sure want trust me) and they will work together with said client. Leaf makes an amount on top of that or a portion of overall deal and everyone wins. So where is the value to the end client? Well, this is similar to what I was dealing with before in that there is alway specific extraction and distribution issues in how imagery is given to Agriculture groups that is generally different. From timing, field boundary AOIs, post processing, multiple indicies, storage, payment, tracking, etc... there is more that is needed beyond what Planet really provides. There is value in it, but it is very technical and one that is different for every different AgTech group.
I’m sure Leaf would be happy to dive into this more with someone, but regardless, I know what they are trying to do and it’s needed to be done to help others more easily connect to Planet. What they do with the data? Who cares. The first issue has always been just getting it at a reasonable cost and effort. They won’t be the only ones doing this I can tell you that, but they are doing it now so cheers to them for the effort in doing so.
Final-ish Opinion this Week - I have more to talk about and I will about Planet. I’ve had a weird history with them and some ups and bigger downs. That’s for a different time. All in all though I’ve always been interested in Planet for a few reasons though the main one is pretty simple. They did it. They put up cubesats and they provide the data they produce daily and they provide value. They’ve made mistakes, but they still did the work and got there. There are ways many groups over the years and plenty currently that have promised putting up “this and that” for satellites and well, most have failed. Planet hasn’t yet and likely won’t especially after going public. They don’t have the best data, but they do still have data and a lot of it. They really were the first “startup” group to build their own satellites and put them up. Also, being first doesn’t always mean the best. In a way from when they first started they sucked all the money out of the space especially once they put up their first birds. Others are and will catch up though. They still have some big gloves to put up a fight and don’t count them out quite yet, but I hope they are ready for a big battle.
Silly Imagery
Quick takes
Hype gone wild - I put these themes here last week and I’m going to keep them here though in relation to how I think they work with my theme for the week, Planet in Ag. I will keep them short and sweet though.
Carbon Credits - Get ready for the PR swarm around this via many different “collaborations” via the Vandersat acquisition plus the gorilla on the wall in their Carbon Mapper project. It’ll get wild soon.
Sustainability - Same as above, but this is more broad. It is the same conversations though I see in this one getting more government contract attention which is what every EO group wants. Hell, everyone wants Government contracts.
Automated field boundary creation - I hope they don’t do this internally as it’s not something they’ll do well as you need other training data to do it well. Then again, they have high resolution sats too that can help in that greatly. Regardless, they’d charge way too much for people to buy it likely anyway.
Crop Type classification - Please don’t, please don’t. Work with others to use your data for this, don’t do it directly.
Yield prediction - Same as crop type classification, please don’t. They will with Vandersat though. Ugh...
Daily imagery - Like, I get it. You do take images every day of the same place on Earth. Bravo, seriously, but sometimes the marketing of this gets annoying. Especially with your Fusion product. It’s cool, but in Ag with a scientific approach it can’t work well for many of the analytics people are wanting. If I’m wrong, fight me on this please. Some of the smartest people in EO I’ve known get annoyed by the Fusion data and the “Daily” thing. It’s Potentially Daily. Maybe I’m just fighting a brick wall here.
Change Detection - Their data doesn’t do this well because the resolution and quality isn’t good enough for the things most in Ag want. It depends somewhat on what is wanted, but former tools didn’t seem that valuable as one would think. For instance, many would get alerts of things that were very apparent and known like a wet hole drying up or a tree in the middle of the field changing. Also, small field dynamics are so complex that just saying there is a change here or there doesn’t necessarily warrant an alert. I’ll talk more on this as time goes on. It’s a pet peeve of mine.
Automated Fertility Loss - This in general I don’t think works well especially if all you use is remote sensing EO data. You need more than this, not worried on them dealing with this I think.
AI/ML something something - Not going there.
I like it -
SAR becoming a bigger thing - They seem to be headed this way. At the very least buying anothe group, building them, or partnering. Makes total sense and there is no reason they shouldn’t. Now, how will SAR work in Ag overall? Still not sure yet, but I welcome more and more data to figure out how it does as it does. We need more data and R&D in Ag around SAR to say the least beyond the Sentinel 1 sats. (RIP S1B it seems)
Hyperspectral becoming more real and scalable - Planet is definitely going here with their Carbon Mapper project as mentioned above, but the spectral side will be interesting in how they handle this. Bigger satellites? Keeping similar sized cubesats (not sure if physics works here or not)? In any realm, we’ll see, but good stuff coming. Now can the scientific community figure out how all the other bands work in Ag accurately and in a scalable way? That is the real question and always has been.
Cheaper High resolution data - This is the natural progression to their Skysat constellation and one that many others are trying to accomplish too (Satellogic and Blacksky come to mind). They are in a swarm of competition here, but have a decent product it seems. Needs for it in Ag? Somewhat in specific use cases for sure, but not broadly yet unless it gets cheaper and easier to access.
Easier access to buying data through marketplaces - In theory they’ve been doing this via other non-Ag groups in the past and are trying to expand via others like Leaf as I talk about above. They need to be better though. I’ve had these talks with Planet before and they just suck at it (no blame on the people, it’s the rules and process). Be better and easier to work with more or less Planet and I do see it happening be it slowly.
Daily imagery - Defining “daily” better - I talk about this above and while I give crap about their Fusion product I do also like the way they are reproaching the “daily” vision of what it actually means. I’m not that mad more or less. It is a great visual tool and while not perfect scientifically for some processes it still has validity. Crop Insurance claims and basic scouting come to mind. It’ll be okay.
Automated field boundary creation (some are better than others) - This doesn’t apply as much with Planet I don’t think, but maybe they can help alot. Work with other groups on this please like with groups like DigiFarm and help them make it work at a greater and more affordable scale.
Good AI/ML something something - Once again, not going there yet.
Super Resolution - This does exist with Dove data I suppose to an extent, but I think I’ll need to cover this trend differently as it works with all types of imagery and I’ve seen there is plenty of talk around it lately. More of a Sentinel thing recently it seems, but one that regardless will bequeath a future conversations by yours truly.
Did you know?
Gossip - While I can’t and won’t expose the exact group, I have heard that a large purchasers of Planet data in Ag is trying to sell the direct software asset they have that uses that data the most. Probably wouldn’t matter much as that company still has a need for it directly, but maybe it’d be transferable any way if they do sell it. Regardless, potentially a lot of money at stake but once again, this is gossip.
Old stories - Apparently when Planet bought BlackBridge in in 2015 which owned the Rapid Satellites, most of the historic data from Rapid Eye was sitting on data tapes (common at the time) in random cardboard boxes in a closet at their old headquarters in Germany. “Millions” worth of data just sitting in boxes exposed. Also, Planet bought them for like 20m-ish. Pretty cheap at the time. Bill Gates put a bid in for $1 and we (my families company) were a few days away from getting funding to buy them ourselves potenially. Crazy times.
Fun fact - My families company Satshot was actually the first distributor of Planet data back in 2013/14 for Ag. This was before they even had satellites in space, but because of our early relationship we agreed to build two data receiving stations and 10+ tracking antennas on our farm in central ND for them. Northern regions are the best for grabbing data and we had fiberoptic internet on the farm as well. Overall it cost them around 2.5m I think, but we saved them much much more on the need to buy commercial land somewhere else with likely tough legal laws to abide by. Not in ND. Much of the Skysat data comes through these now from what I understand, but a lot of Dove data used to. That’s moved to Svalbard now. All in all, this was suppose to turn into somewhat of a larger thing between us both and almost did. It didn’t though and funny as it seems our biggest competitors in the imagery space in Ag were getting data for their products directly through our land, but not us. You can’t make this stuff up. Ask my dad Lanny if you really want more info on this.
The Future
What is junk - Old Doves
So this has been the plan by them, nothing crazy here. They are meant to burn up after a few years and the old ones are not going to do anything better for Ag or beyond. Now they have the Super Doves with 4 more bands for 8 total. Great and all, but not sure if it’s enough. The problem Planet is going to have if some of the newer constellations go up is that their Dove data will very shortly become low grade daily data. Valuable, sure to some extent, but it depends on what you do very soon in regards to access to Dove data. If some others get their way like EarthDaily, Satellogic, Wyvern, EOS, Satrevolution, and others, Planet could be in trouble in Ag especially in the quality game.
What has potential - Historical Planet Data
I feel this should be easy to figure out. Please for the love the God open up your historical data for free to some extent for Ag. I don’t care if it’s from a few years back. If you want groups in Ag to create valuable agronomic models from your data you need to give them uninterrupted access to some data for a few years so they can use historical data to verify the value of your data with the models they create without risk. Charging for it is risk. Eliminate the risk now and you will sell more data than you realize, especially before others get these new constellations up. Play to win the game, not to rig the game like you’ve been doing in Ag since you started. You know what I mean here.
Planet in a Nutshell
So I really hope Will and Robbie read this. I sort of knew Robbie through my dad as we were working together on multiple fronts for years, but never talked to Will. I’m not writing this as a slam down or anything like that with Planet. I really just want their data to work better for Ag as a whole and I do truly believe it has and will continue to do so in many ways.
Why I’m picking on them? I’ve had a weird long unique history with Planet as you can probably see. It hasn’t always been good trust me. Though in saying that I can really dive into what they are which I think people need and want to know. I have no real qualms with Planet, but someone needs to keep them and others that work with them honest. It is really easy and traditionally has been to take advantage of Agriculture regarding EO data. Hard to explain, but it is very prevalent and won’t go away anytime soon unfortunately.
The reality? Beyond the above points, Planet, as I’ve mentioned has been a juggernaut around EO and AG since they started up. I’ve been in the middle of it. It’s plainly true and more than any other EO group by far. This is why I needed to talk about them first regarding my new newsletter. How could I not? I do have much more to talk about around Planet and that includes positives and negatives. Overall, they are here and work with Ag and shouldn’t go away. They’ve helped shape how EO groups should and shouldn’t work with Ag and well the reason I’m writing this I guess. All the best to them and I will always continue to support groups that go beyond the norm and try to do impossible things. Planet has done that to many extents and deserve a decent slow clap.
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Interesting insights Nathan, thanks for sharing.