# Marcus Brentfield, Crop Operations Manager at Brentfield Farms (1,800 acres, central Indiana) — read of Farm AI, May 9 2026

> 14 years managing row crops, went from paper ledgers to FarmLogs to something in between. My dad still thinks spreadsheets are a fad.

## How I got here

Someone in a Facebook group I'm in for mid-size grain ops linked this. The comment was "anyone tried this yet?" with zero context. I Googled "farm ai software" expecting to land on some recycled John Deere white paper and ended up here instead. Bookmarked it on my phone during my kid's soccer practice and came back to it tonight on my laptop.

## What I clicked first

The tagline. "Run your farm like a business. Finally." That word "finally" is doing a lot of work. I've heard that same energy from every ag-tech startup since 2017. But I didn't immediately close the tab, which is more than I can say for most. There's something in the bluntness of it. Farmers hate being talked down to and they also hate corporate softness, so landing somewhere plain at least clears that bar.

I clicked "Watch the 30-second explainer" next because 30 seconds is the only commitment I was willing to make. I don't know if that link worked or if I was just reading the page text, because based on what I can see, I still have no idea what this product actually does.

## Where I paused

The "Before / With Farm AI" framing. That stopped me because it's the right structure -- show me the pain, then show me the relief. But I can't tell you what the before and after actually were. If there were specific numbers or a real scenario there (bushels miscounted, labor hours wasted, something tangible) I might have leaned in. Instead I'm staring at a structure that promises contrast without delivering one.

## What I distrusted

"Built by Wishdeal Studio." That tells me a software studio built this product, not a farmer or an agronomist. That's not disqualifying, but I've been burned by tech people who think farming is just logistics with mud. The "About" link didn't do enough to counter that in my scan. If the founders never ran a planting schedule or haggled over input prices, I want to know who they talked to before building this. I didn't find that.

Also: the phrase "how it works" as a nav item means nothing to me until I know what "it" is. The homepage doesn't answer the baseline question before pointing me to deeper sections.

## What would convince me

One real farm. Not "a farm in Iowa." Tell me Gary Schroeder, 2,200 acres, corn and soy, used to track input costs in Excel, now does X differently because of this tool, and here's the thing he noticed in year two. One person, one operation, one specific before/after that isn't a slide template. That would do more than any feature list.

Also: what does "AI" mean here specifically? Are we talking yield predictions? Expense forecasting? Labor scheduling? Soil recommendations? Those are four completely different products. If you're doing all four you're probably doing none of them well.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. What does your typical user track in this that they were tracking somewhere else before -- and did switching actually save them time or just move the problem?
2. Does this connect to my existing equipment data (I'm running a mix of Case IH and some older monitors) or does someone on my team have to enter everything manually?
3. Who built the "AI" part -- what data was it trained on, and is it general or specific to grain operations in the Midwest?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The tagline earned a second look but the page doesn't hold up the weight that tagline puts on it. I'd need 90 more seconds of actual product context before I'd reach out, and right now I don't have it.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-09. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*