The 7th Edition of my Imagery in Ag weekly series
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Opening thoughts for the week
As some might have seen or realized this week is that I’m trying to shift my timing on when I release this newsletter. My goal now is for Sunday morning. Why? Well, I know a few others that do it at this time too and they’ve mentioned to me it seems to work pretty well. At the same time, there are less emails on Sunday and when you wake up in the morning or whenever on Sunday it can be pretty common to just find a cozy spot, check out, and read some random crap on your phone. So hopefully this newsletter can be that random crap, be it sitting in your favorite chair or literally taking one.
Now for an Imagery in Ag opener…I’ll open up this week in saying two main things.
One: I’m not 100% sure this will keep on being a weekly affair. While I want it to be, it seems I’m starting to get all the content together the last minute due to my busy life. So, I might switch this to a bi-weekly newsletter soon. Also, there is only so many things to talk about every week regarding EO in Ag at this point. I’m sure this will change in the future.
Two: From a close connection of mine, I recently was told I’m really critical and negative towards Satellite imagery or even imagery in Ag in general. That is partially true, but context matters. For one, I’m a big supporter of imagery and the groups that try and provide solutions using it in Ag and beyond. I grew up being enveloped in this thought process and believe in it. I wouldn’t write about it if I didn’t. This critical part though is also very true and the reason though via being negative or honest about it comes down to much of what you’ll read towards the bottom of this weeks newsletter. Simple put, way too many have screwed the pooch per say the whole process of EO in Ag and sometimes you need to call it all out to help others.
I don’t mean to be harsh on one type of imagery group, source, or product, I’m critical because I’ve seen time and time again what can work, what does work, what doesn’t work, and what is just literally crap, hype, or lies. Someone has to call a spade a spade once in awhile even if it means you have to be realistic and put down the thing your passionate about. If you care about something enough you’ll do what you have to do to make sure if survives and does well in life. This of imagery in Ag as a subset of my childlike parenting responsibility, you just have to do it whether you like it or not or whether it’s been bad or good. I’m trying to Shepard a bunch of Sharks here, not Sheep. It’s not simple, but I’ll try and I hope you’ll help me as well.
Highlight of the Week
Pixxel Space: What a big week for these guys! Money raised and a successful launch! Bully! Anyway, another Hyperspectral group to go over this week and one on the rise to say the least. This one is based out of India and they just had some big news come their way in a 25m A round to help them get everything going. It seems they are on their way to putting up some satellites and they have, 1 just on Friday, 3 later this year it seems and 3 for next year. I don’t know these guys as well as some of the others out there, but I do know some people from the Ag side that are working with them to certain extents. So this at least means they are trying to think of broader Ag capabilities early which is good. Images below from their website.
What is their story? - Pixxel was founded in 2019 by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal during their final year at BITS Pilani. They were also part of Team Hyperloop India, which participated in SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition. More or less they seem to have the knowledge to push forward into technology to say the least. They also do have an office in the US it seems which is pretty common and are trying to be another big player in the Hyperspectral world which is expanding fast.
Why they are different? - Well…hard to say right now, but they are another Hyperspectral group and are planning on putting up a large constellation of 5m GSD birds with 150+ spectral bands. They’ll be able to cover a multitude of different industries and as I’ve written about before, Agriculture is usually a pretty big group these groups go after. Until I really find more specs on their sats and business model I can’t do a great job at differentiating them, but in do time. Keep close tabs on them I’ll say.
What can they do now? - It seems you’ll be able to at least test some of their data as they do have a former satellite already up for R&D purposes, but actually they just launched another new test satellite this last Friday. This one is at 10m, but considering they have that up there now they should be able to really showcase their future capabilities. Getting that done in of itself is a big deal and I commend them for it. The next trick will be how others plan to utilize this data and push it into viable products for whatever market.
What’s the 411? - With this newer test satellite up, which resolution wise is better than some of the government birds up in the space, it really positions them well into the future. That combined with the latest 25m raise they also got this week pushes them even further into a positive trend. It is not to say they can’t waste it all and still have problems getting their next sats up, but it does highlight that they are doing their due diligence when it comes to being a viable space and data company.
Overall, Ag is going to be tricky for them like other Hyperspectral groups due to the mass amount of new possibilities that are still to be unlocked by professionals through more testing. Macroscale capabilities with Hyperspectral are real now to an extent, but that is with lower resolution like 30m or worse. Many UAV and Drone groups have done it, but at a smaller scale. Ag has done plenty of small scale testing, but good high resolution Hypersepectral data should open up a lot more ideas. This will be what I keep my focus on still with Hyperspectral is how the value is unlocked at scale compared to normal Multispectral arrays.
It will not be an overnight process within Ag I can tell you that, so patience is key for you listening here. Please do though talk to these guys and other groups like to them to try and help them understand how you’d like to use it via testing, research, or product development. These groups need Ag insights of all sorts, but they also need to help show Ag the power of their data better.
Quick takes
Frustration gone wild and with some past history - The meme above is the result of a little (not little) issue that happened awhile back. It has to do with how the perception of value of imagery with farmers was almost overnight reduced to zero in my opinion. It has caused issues ever since then and I’m honestly not sure if it is really recoverable. It is also a reason you have seen some other imagery analytic groups struggle to meet revenue targets much like the big one in Farmers Edge this last week and the outing of their CEO (over due if you ask me but likely won’t change much). My friend Shane Thomas talks about it more here. Trust me when I say this, I have plenty of thoughts about this but haven’t figured out when and how quite yet. Be patient...
Back to the value of imagery. Back in early 2015, BlackBridge (now Planet) made a deal with Farmlogs (acquired by Bushel last year) around using their 5m imagery products to support the creation of valued added products like VRA maps and crop health monitoring. Pretty standard stuff on the surface and doesn’t seem nefarious either from the initial angle. Well, the problem was two fold actually and one with Black Bridge and the other with Farmlogs. Unfortunately my families company Satshot was caught right in the middle of it while it also started affecting a slew of others too. Overall, it was the start to the declined perception of value with imagery in Agriculture.
Let us start with the Black Bridge issue. First off, Rapid Eye actually started as a German company with tons of government support. I actually remember reading their business plan back in like 2006 I feel before they even launched their 5 satellites. While they got like 200m from the German Govt to build and launch these things, their business model and tech behind distributing it were always a problem. First off, they were trying to verticalize the Ag industry themselves and didn’t want to work with 3rd party providers at all really beyond distributing their pre-packaged analytical imagery products. It didn’t work at all. Eventually, Black Bridge based out of Canada bought them in 2011.
Soon after, they did start working with groups like us and we helped also with their distribution process in helping develop some of their API processes via servers as before it was not handled this way at all. Think of getting mailed a hard drive, literally. Anyway, we built and developed a partnership to help them be a distributor to the Ag industry beyond also creating optional analytics for others with Rapid Eye data as well. We became a dealer more or less. From about 2011-2014 we were one of the only a few in Ag distributing their data and things were okay, but even then it was hard to sell the data. For one it was pretty expensive, but groups were just starting to really understand the potential value and writing big checks were hard to come by.
Now the Farmlogs saga. Our Black Bridge partnership was starting to look better as we started working with Pioneer on a large scale, some other crop insurance groups, and other startup groups full with cash like Farmlogs. They wanted us to be the distributor of Rapid Eye imagery into their platform with our analytics. This was looking good, but then something started to happen. Instead of Black Bridge going through their few dealers and distributors in Ag to get to other Farm Management softwares, they started to sell direct. A big reason for this was there started to become a lot of new startups in Ag flush with cash due to the recent Monsanto acquisition of Climate Corp at the time. Hype was big. A wild time nonetheless.
What happened is instead of Black Bridge working with us and these newbies, they went around us and sold the same license to Farmlogs for like twice the price as a direct sale. Farmlogs stopped talking to us and started to use what they learned from us to try and develop their own analytics. We were paying Black Bridge around 800k/yr for North American access with options in other areas. Farmlogs paid them a check for 1.4m from what I heard for the same thing basically. So first off, this was a problem not only as being a dealer but just a shitty thing to do. Why it happened though was basically Black Bridge needed money and fast. Why, can’t remember exactly but it’s a common thing to go around stuff if you need money. Not the worst part of this though.
What happened next was confusing to say the least. Farmlogs integrated the Rapid Eye imagery from Black Bridge directly and gave it away for FREE for an entire year. They did this to get users into their system to look more valuable and in the hope to push newer agronomic services. What they ended up doing was literally saying to farmers that there isn’t a lot of value in this imagery as we are giving it to you for FREE. Not only did this hurt the perception of imagery in Ag, it also helped kill Black Bridges future. How could they let that happen? That was always a question I had and basically it came down to greed. They could get more from others than us distributors up front and wanted the money. The thing is, we wanted to do a revenue share model with them but they didn’t. Doing that would’ve solved this issue or at least helped in the long run.
Anyway, partially due to this I think it forced them selling to Planet later that summer in 2015. The further unfortunate thing about that whole deal is that it continued though with Planet and while we and others tried to help them in many ways before that, after the acquisition Planet almost doubled down it felt towards selling direct instead of working with other imagery distributors. This basically led them to their Farmers Edge deal which helped bring them to the brink, but they luckily they survived that. In any realm, like I was saying is that the damage was done regarding how the value of imagery data was perceived.
Now in saying this all Sentinel coming on board didn’t necessarily help either, though I’d say it’s quite a different story. An imagery source provider allowing a client to sell and distribute that data for free isn’t necessarily a crime or something you can say shouldn’t be possible, but considering how it was done and why was very questionable. All in all, it helped many in Ag start to question the value of imagery in many different ways. Sure, it was personal for me but the worst part was how it affected many others into the future. I still see the affects today. What a shame, but here we are and it is tough to say still how growers and others that use it directly in the field perceive the value.
Closing thoughts for the week
It would be hard for me not to talk about this as I’ve had…call it a former bad experience with this group. I’m not alone either. In any regard, I’m not going to dive into all the recent financial pieces as my friend Shane has already done way better at it and he used to work there too so a fit even better. Heck, it’s the second time I’ve shared that link.
Anyway, I’m going to try and talk about Farmers Edge in the relation of imagery and why what is going on with them is partially tied to it. It more or less isn’t that complicated of a connection to make as they’ve really pushed Planet data over the years as they had an exclusive with them. I’ve talked about that and more here. The problem to all of that and a big reason they’ve had issues financially can start with imagery in the first place if you ask me. This also can be a warning for others in our current times and to the future.
If you don’t have a unique, scalable, and value added product using a special type of imagery, you’re going to have a lot of problems.
It doesn’t matter if it’s from a drone, plane, or satellite. Plenty of these groups have over promised and under-delivered lately unfortunately. A short list here is Terravion, Mavrx, and Farmlogs (their imagery part…see above)…there are more and heck, even my own families company Satshot has had its issues in certain parts of it. In saying that, I also don’t blame Farmers Edge 100% in their issues with imagery. The problem actually can lie within the imagery providers or the tech around it itself.
The issue with Farmers Edge financials and its relation to imagery comes down to the reality that they spent well over 50 million in just data costs towards Planet in the last 5 years. I’ve heard it is actually higher than that with other analytical products they licensed as well from Planet. That is a lot of money and one that forces a group to have to focus on it through its entire product line and process, which they did. That is all understandable and all, but the problem once again comes down to the perception of the value and the realistic ROI it actually showcases.
That was what I feel has been at a core of their issues. For one that they actually did make the deal they did, plus in how they sold it. From the outside looking in it seemed they were trying to do too many things with imagery data. Focusing on VRA, Crop Insurance, Yield Prediction, Disease and Pest Prediction, Change Detection, Crop Classification, Custom Projects, and much more and not only just say in North America, but everywhere as that is what their deal showcased with Planet through the exclusive. Overall, they stretched themselves way too thin on way too many potential solutions.
If they would’ve focused on say only a few areas with imagery or even focused on saying they wanted to try and help the industry in building up the possibiltles in how to use Planet data they would’ve had much more success. Instead, they tried to control the entirety of the potential and forced themselves to have to focus on way too much which cost them way too much money with marginal returns. It’s not that they couldn’t generally sell imagery solutions to Ag, it’s that they didn’t do it really great in any particular area.
Overall, they’ve made some recent changes and who knows if that’ll actually change anything. It seems to me a lot of the damage is done and it’s going to tough to regain confidence in the marketplace for them. They’ve also done something to the imagery perception much like I mentioned above in what Farmlogs did in the past. While FE didn’t give it away for free per say, they didn’t do a good enough job of showing the value of Planet daily imagery data while they had complete control of it in Ag and with that still lost money doing it all.
So, what is the lesson to learn here? Be careful in how far you go in pushing one type of data and also how much you spend on pushing it if you do. The issue in this can’t be solved though by Ag itself. The other here that I’ll call out in the problem FE had and many others before them like I had to deal with regarding Rapid Eye above and Farmlogs is that of the Source Provider. They can be the biggest problem in their own growth in Ag.
I’ve stated it before, but in order for EO to work in Ag they both need to relook at how they work together. It can’t work for the most part in going after a few big deals in Ag by the EO groups. It also won’t work well in Ag groups trying to make just a few big EO imagery type deals with others in Ag. As I mentioned above, we tried to make a revenue share deal with Rapid Eye very early on with little fan fair. Revenue share with complete open access to what data is available between EO and Ag groups is what is needed. That and very open licensing and relationships. Ag holds the keys in actually getting people to pay for some sort of valued product, but they need the data with low costs and low risk initially before the end client sale so they can create the solutions that someone wants to pay for.
So all in all, EO groups need to stop acting like the old EO groups from the past. Ag groups have to put their foot down until EO groups realize this. My peace for the week.
Fun Stuff
I know this is getting better and I could’ve put in “Access to their data” in there as well in many ways too. In saying this below, can you guys on the EO side work with Ag to help figure out a better financial and access model with your data? I’m happy to help.
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I don't want to speak too much of my time at FE (almost 2 years) in the DS group but, the biggest problem we had was getting the rest of the company to respect the work and results we could provide. I always felt we spent a lot of time understanding the Planet imagery making some really good information available but then having no one what to use it because they don't respect where it came from. There was always so much to do as well, so many things we could help with but no one wanted analytics or data to back up what they were saying - it was all about soil and stuff like that - the agronomists just didn't get it.