There are so many industries that aren't going to be 'disrupted' by some fancy new tech. Because they have much more urgent low tech problems to solve first.
I've lost count in the number of startups that want to 'disrupt' agriculture with blockchain, because, you know, who wouldn't want to have their potatoes tracked in a decentralized proof-of-stake ledger? PotatoCoin! But reality is that to store data in a blockchain, you first need data to begin with. Many of the business in agriculture is conducted on a handshake, usually there isn't even paperwork. Also, in many countries agriculture relies on operating in a grey area of tax, just to break a profit. I bet a lot of farmers don't even want a transparent ledger for everyone to see ;-)
Most of us developers don't have the real-life industry experience to remotely understand where the opportunities lie. And we are way to naive to think that we can solve any problem with software.
I've been a farmer for most of my life in conjunction with my day job, and this is correct.
There was an article recently in a modern farming magazine about how restaurants and downstream consumer organizations and businesses want to use blockchain technology to track where a cow was raised, where it was processed and how, and when it became the hamburger or whatever you're eating so that customers can scan it and feel better about themselves and their choices.
Cool. Super cool technology. That I will never use on my farm because it provides me with absolutely 0 incentive at the start of the stream other than increased overhead. After looking into the technology, there are ways to use that data to track cattle, and ways to use that data to track yield and feed ratios and that sort of thing, but it's not the purpose, and therefore almost impossible to get out of the system. It also would be super easy to game by the large 'family owned' farms (sort of like how they do it now anyway).
And I already do what I need with excel, it's just time consuming. So it's another example of 'BUT IT'S TECHNOLOGY' that just doesn't appeal to me.
For other examples see: automated weed control, most automated irrigation systems, most automated weather and climate tracking systems, and definitely any/all automated feed and livestock management systems.
The one thing you said that I want to push back - from a very US centered perspective - very little farming is done via handshake anymore. Any farmer who is actually able to survive does so by playing the markets, by pushing formal contracts, and by being smarter than that. Nothing on the outgoing side is left to chance anymore, because all of our inputs are based on chance already (weather, performance, yield).
There are so many industries that aren't going to be 'disrupted' by some fancy new tech. Because they have much more urgent low tech problems to solve first.
I've lost count in the number of startups that want to 'disrupt' agriculture with blockchain, because, you know, who wouldn't want to have their potatoes tracked in a decentralized proof-of-stake ledger? PotatoCoin! But reality is that to store data in a blockchain, you first need data to begin with. Many of the business in agriculture is conducted on a handshake, usually there isn't even paperwork. Also, in many countries agriculture relies on operating in a grey area of tax, just to break a profit. I bet a lot of farmers don't even want a transparent ledger for everyone to see ;-)
Most of us developers don't have the real-life industry experience to remotely understand where the opportunities lie. And we are way to naive to think that we can solve any problem with software.