With the Use of Big Data, the Age of ‘White-Collar Farmers’ is Coming
Recently, there’s a company that has garnered a lot of attention within the agriculture industry. It provides a solution for turning vinyl houses into smart farms, and goes by the name GREEN LABS.
In reality, there already exists many companies like this.
Yet there are two main reasons why the company has been getting the attention it has been getting. One is that not only do they provide a smart farm solution, they also collect all of the data that comes from each farm to create new additional value. The second is their ‘Digital Agriculture Platform’ business, a platform in which it supplies all the materials a farmer could possibly need for farming in one place.
GREEN LABS’ idea of grafting big data and Internet platforms in agriculture is closely related to the history of its founders. Leading the company, CEOs Sang-hoon Shin and Dong-hyeon Ahn are experienced and well-known throughout the IT industry, having already experienced exits (sale of their companies).
CEO Sang-hoon Shin (40) founded Ridi Books, the largest e-book platform in Korea, and also founded Next Match in 2013, operating the dating app ‘Amanda’ for young people. Amanda quickly gained a lot of popularity with its entrance into the market, recording 3 million app downloads. CEO Shin later sold the company, however, feeling the limitations to the demand and subsequent business models.
CEO Dong-hyun Ahn founded Kucha in 2011 with the introduction of the ‘Hot Deal Shopping Portal’. The app was well received and recorded up to 16 million app downloads. And in 2013, CEO Ahn sold the company’s stake to Yellow Mobile.
The two people, who naturally came to know each other while working in the IT industry, wondered what to do next after selling their stakes. Shin said, “The world is starting to focus more on the 4th Industrial Revolution, and the existing industry has been developing into a new one with the aid of ICT. “He continued, “We looked for an industry in which startups, rather than large corporations, can realize this trend into reality. And what we found was the agriculture industry.” Ahn added, “Because the agriculture industry is still largely offline-oriented rather than online, I believed the industry had a lot of room to develop and thus there would be a lot of roles we could play in doing so.”
Founded in May 2017, GREEN LABS has been achieving its initial goals smoothly. The company’s main business is to disseminate its data-based farm management system ‘Farm Morning’ to farmers. Currently, it is working with 800 farmhouses to provide smart farm solutions, and expects to reach 2,000 by the end of this year.
This year’s sales are expected to be at least four times higher than last year’s sales of 9.3 billion won. Thanks to this growth expectation, the company has attracted a total of 10.5 billion KRW from various investors including Main Street Investment, a private equity fund (PE).
GREEN LABS transforms 2,000-pyeong vinyl houses into smart farms for around 20 million won. Outside the house, equipment that measures the weather such as solar radiation, temperature, precipitation, wind direction, and wind speed is installed. Inside the house, solar radiation, temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration, and soil temperature and humidity are separately measured. Through this, the farm automatically controls when to open the windows and curtains, how much to turn the blower and fan, etc. to create optimal conditions for the crops. GREEN LABS also collects and analyzes big data collected through the cloud servers in each smart farm to determine the optimal values. CEO Ahn explained, “The conventional farming method has been to make decisions based on the information transmitted through the five senses of the farmers. But now, we have made it possible to help farmers make decisions based on data collected through a multitude of sensors.”
GREEN LABS aims to change farmers from manual workers to knowledgeable ones. “By collecting big data, we can provide farmers the most ideal temperature, humidity, and CO2 concentration levels,” CEO Shin said. “If farmers set each figure in advance, the farm will automatically run so that labor costs and other incidental costs are reduced, which in turn will increase the maximum productivity of the farmers.” He added, “By combining artificial intelligence with big data, it may even be possible for farms to self learn the best cultivation methods and grow on its own in the future.”
Farmers didn’t easily adopt GREEN LABS’ system at first; it was very difficult to help farmers who were familiar with conventional methods of farming understand the concept of smart farms using data. CEO Ahn’s role in convincing and persuading farmers was huge, going around farm to farm as if he lived in the countryside himself. Ahn, who planned the core technologies and services of GREEN LABS, devoted most of of his time in meeting farmers after helping found the company. Explaining to farmers the advantages of using GREEN LABS’ solutions and big data was like attempting to break a rock with an egg.
“Farmers who have experienced and dealt with many businesses didn’t trust such an early company at first,” said Ahn. “However, while being around in the countryside, I would run directly to their farms if any problems arose with the solution to share their grievances. And at some point, the farmers began to share their trust and open up to the business.”
GREEN LABS is now dreaming of a new dream. Currently, it is focusing on providing and supplying smart farm solutions. However in the future, it hopes to become a comprehensive agricultural platform company encompassing the entire industry. GREEN LABS’ final business model is the ‘digital agricultural platform’.
“In order to increase productivity, farmers need to increase efficiency throughout the entire process of farming, not just grow their crops well,” said CEO Shin. “Thus, we need to identify the best kind of materials to use, such as fertilizers and farming equipment, and which channels to sell the crops.” In order to achieve this, it became evident that all the scattered information needed to be gathered and collected into one place, which is why GREEN LABS decided to establish its agricultural platform. GREEN LABS’ goal is to provide all services from A-Z when it comes to farming- not just to farmers who have built smart farms through the company, but to all farmers who decide to become a member of the platform.
For now, the company has made it its goal to secure at least 10,000 members.
“Just like how delivery people transformed a market once full of only newspaper leaflets into a digital delivery market by gathering all the information in one place, I believe gathering all the information farmers need will help produce the maximum effect at the minimum cost,” explained CEO Shin. “So far, even a small insect infestation requires the calling of an expert to solve the problem in person. Yet in the future, simply posting a photo on the web will be able to open the way for a diagnosis and prescription.”
GREEN LABS is introducing a new service called Morning Note. Members of the Farm Morning Platform will be provided with all the data farmers need for free. This includes various information such as weather, market prices, farming methods, and farm materials. According to CEO Ahn, “As the number of members increase, both the amount and quality of data accumulated will improve, and so the level of farm morning service will only improve over time.”
The company has high hopes for expanding the market for farmers. “The fundamental problem with the distribution of agricultural products is that there are mismatches between farmers and consumers who need such crops,” said CEO Shin. “Once the agricultural platform is activated, such mismatches can be resolved so that farmers can sell their products at the best prices.”
“We hope that farmers will eventually be able to work like white collars by saving time and money spent on farming through GREEN LABS’ Farm Morning Service,” said CEO Ahn. “Then farmers will be able to figure out how to distribute their crops the most efficiently, and we are confident that Korean agriculture will develop just as much.”
[Agricultural reporter Hyuk-hoon Jeong]
[Mail Business Newspaper]
