alt Hacker NewsFarming is a way of life for a lot of people, not just a business. That’s what is missing from your picture. And by population, small time farmers significantly outnumber industrial outfits, regardless of how much they spend. Sure you can make more money selling the most advanced tech to the biggest spenders. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for affordable, reliable equipment that gets the job done. Add on the risky nature of farming and its untenable to trap yourself in high 6 figures of debt and pray that you can optimize your way to enough profit to pay the interest.
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azernik • yesterday at 11:39 AM
"regardless of how much they spend" is not a statement that you can put in a business plan
Not so. In fact, farming is a way of life for almost nobody in developed countries.[1]
Ursa shows us that there is indeed a market for "simple and reliable" equipment -- but it's not cheap or affordable. There is zero market for "affordable" equipment, because almost nobody does small scale farming anymore
Small farms became economically and socially irrelevant almost a century ago in developed countries. Petroleum based fertilizer and industrial machinery drove the marginal cost of food to zero, and it is now only profitable to farm at very large industrial scale.
The main social outcome there was that starvation and malnutrition became vanishingly rare in these countries.
(In fact, _obesity_ is now, for the first time in human history, a widespread problem for the poorest in these societies.)
Society chose "nobody starving" as a better outcome than preserving romantic small farms for the sake of tradition.
[1] Less than 1% of the US population works in agriculture today (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12961) as compared to ~30% in the early 20th century.