Bringing the cloud to the farmthe beautiful vistas of the heartland are hardly short on clouds, but a new type may fundamentally change the way farmers work. Cloud computing and Internet services for agriculture are growing in popularity, allowing farmers to keep better track of their assets--from crops to livestock to expenses. Despite the bucolic mental image of hard labor by hand, farmers tend to be on the cutting edge of technology. Their iphones are 30-ft.-long, $60, 000 hay balers. Cloud startups have served largely their own industry--technology--first, but increasingly they are specializing and expanding into industry verticals. Agriculture, of course, is a big one, alongside healthcare, financial services, energy and defense. The New york times'Randall Stross profiles a few of these companies, which include Ann arbor, Mich. -based Farmlogs, which tracks and centralizes crop activity; Croatia's  Farmeron, which brings analytics to livestock management; and Mountain view, Calif.-based  Solum, which focuses on soil analysis. In essence, Stross writes, Solum and other start-ups are building the technology to allow farmers to benefit from data science. Can Silicon valley bring a little more silicon to America's valleys? Looks like it. Photo:
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