Application Development for Farmers

I was reading on CNN this morning about a farmer in Nebraska that is using Twitter on the farm.  This story peaked my interest because, as a lot of you may know, I grew up on my family’s farm in Eastern Arkansas, and they are still very much so involved with farming.  I am not for sure of the size of the total operation now but I know it’s bigger now than when I was there and it seemed overwhelming then.  For some reason I don’t see my dad ever using Twitter, and that’s cool with me, but I do see him eventually using his smartphone to record data and retrieve information.  Here’s an excerpt from CNN about the farmer that is using Twitter on the farm:

Twittering From the Tractor:
(CNN) — As he rolls across the wheat fields of his Nebraska farm, Steve Tucker often has his hands not on the wheel of his tractor, but on a smartphone. Steve Tucker, a Twittering farmer, pauses in front of his tractor in Nebraska. He sometimes posts a dozen messages per day on Twitter, commenting on everything from the weather to the state of his crops to his son’s first tractor ride and even last night’s cheeseburger.  Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm – CNN.com

I started telling my dad back in the 90’s that it wasn’t going to be long before computers became a necessity in their day to day management on the farm.  I even devoted a lot of time developing some applications in Visual Basic to assist them in tracking various aspects of the business.  We never really used it on a large scale, I did however input my own personal farm information into it and eventually sold it to a company in Washington who built onto it and marketed it to farmers across the country as an early form of farm management software.  There are a lot of farm management applications on the market today, but I still think that Red Wing might be the leader when it comes to micro-managing a multi-million dollar operation, even smaller operations can benefit from it’s advanced accounting and payroll functionality.

CenterPoint from Redwing Software
CenterPoint is the most versatile Ag software product on the market, yet it’s easy to set up and use. By using CenterPoint, you can see which area of your operation is generating income, and which is not. By doing this, you can focus on the income generating enterprises, and increase your profits. The profitability of your operation depends on good financial management. CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture gives you everything you need to manage your operation’s finances. Get the answers you need to make important business decisions to increase profitability, become more efficient, and achieve your goals. (click here to learn more…)

It wasn’t long after this that we started seeing farm equipment such as combines and spray rigs that were shipped to us with GPS capabilities.  We didn’t latch onto the new technology at the time but since I have left the farm it’s been funny to watch them gradually move into this realm.  The equipment they use on the farm today would shock a lot of people.  Most people wouldn’t expect to see air conditioned cabs w/ air-ride seating, computerized controls, GPS, 2-way radios, and high-definition stereos on farm equipment, but that’s pretty much the norm anymore. I have even seen a television mounted inside a combine before.

All of this to say that technology has found it’s way into Agriculture in a big way.  This past winter I wrote some software for my dad to help him manage day to day operations like tracking chemical purchases, seed buys, planting dates, fertilizer costs, fuel consumption, etc.  We sat down and outlined every possible piece of data that he wanted to capture and I setup a web-based application that allowed them to track these items and generate reports.  We also setup some notebook pc’s that could connect to this database with cellular cards and shipped them out to the fields. 

Our intentions were great but this year things were pretty hectic during the planting season that we didn’t capture as much data as we would have liked but I am hopeful that next year will be different, especially since everyone on the farm is getting more and more familiar with technology and the use of the internet. 

There are some other advantages to being connected to the internet while working out in the field.  For example, seed purchases and futures bookings can be made online now via email.  Commodity markets can also be tracked closely via the web as well, but probably the most useful tool during planting and harvest season is online weather.  The satellite and radar imagery provided by many news and weather websites today is phenomenal, and has evolved quite a bit from the DTN satellite systems we used to rely on to predict rain.

Another tool that has been on the farm for years is the mobile phone.  When I was growing the first people I ever saw with cell phones were farmers.  Of course they weren’t the small smartphones that everyone carries in their shirt pockets or clipped on their belts today, the earliest phones I remember were heavy truck mounted phones that had a cord attached to them.  I can remember my uncle even having his setup so that if it would ring the horn on his truck would start honking so that if he was in the field or away from the truck he would know about it.

Fortunately mobile phones have evolved over time as well, and this past winter my dad got his first smartphone. We even tested the farm application that I mentioned earlier on the Blackberry so that it would be accessible and data could be entered from it.

I know that when most people think about farming they picture old, topless, 2-cylinder tractors sitting all alone in a 1000 acre field with the driver fully exposed to the elements but that’s just not how it is anymore. I am sure that in some smaller family operations that is still a way of life, but for the most part farmers have started embracing technology.  I believe that over the next couple of years we are going to see a growing need for applications to be developed for use on large farming operations as well as smaller family operations.

If you own or operate a farm and are considering some form of application to track your day to day operations such as chemical applications, pesticide reporting, equipment maintenance logs, fuel consumption, seed purchases, yield tracking, and custom harvesting, please feel free to contact my partners and I to discuss your needs.  We would love the opportunity to work with you and while we don’t have a specific product to sell you, we can develop a custom application for your operation to fit your needs.

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