For many years, farmers produced food without the use of farm management software. Farm management software, or FMS, is essential to success in today's quick-paced and fiercely competitive food production industry.
The Benefits of Farm Management Software
When farm management software is used in an agricultural operation, costs are cut, yields are enhanced, produce quality is improved, profits are increased, and operational risk is decreased.
Farm management software specifically offers seven major advantages.
1) More accurate and timely agricultural decisions
Farm management software is ideally suited to assisting farmers and growers manage their agronomic practices due to data management's capacity to gather, record, and synthesize large amounts of information from numerous sources (such as weather stations, soil monitors, images from satellites and drones, local, regional, and federal agricultural databases, and more).
Farm management software aids farmers and growers in making agronomic choices that reduce yield losses under challenging circumstances and enhance yield amounts and quality under ideal circumstances.
- observes weather forecasts and severe weather warnings.
- alerts to circumstances that increase the risk of pest and illness.
- measures the state of plant health over the course of a crop.
Determines the most cost-effective amount of inputs based on crop status, input costs, predicted yields, and crop value. Predicts the ideal fertilization windows.
keeps an eye out for the right times of day to spray for disease and pest management.
determines the best time to harvest a crop depending on its quality, maturity, and the time after input applications.
2) More Effective Input Utilization
Profitable farmers work hard to use their inputs effectively rather than just chasing yields.
Input expenses, frequently the most expensive line item in a farm's operating budget, have soared recently. Farmers must use every last bit of profitability from each pound of fertilizer applied and avoid overapplying as a result of rising fertilizer costs. A farmer may be better off cutting inputs and sacrificing output depending on a variety of variables, such as crop value and soil fertility, than investing an excessive amount of money on a costly fertilizer buy.
Input use decisions can be evaluated using farm management software in a variety of ways, which ultimately saves farmers and growers money.
- creates variable rate scripts to apply seeds, fertilizer, and crop protection in the most effective way possible.
- based on field observations and scouting, assesses the ROI of moving from proactive to reactive spraying operations.
- optimizes water use based on historical data, rainfall predictions, and insights about water stress.
By keeping an eye on input utilization analytics by field, crop, and varietal, variations are minimized.
3) Enhance Field Operations and Workforce Management
Managing the farm staff effectively may make or break a business. Farm worker management, however, is challenging. Crews frequently work far from the farm office. However, at hectic times like harvest, a lot of things might occur at once, making effective communication routes even more important.
Better workforce management equals to cost savings, thus implementing farm management software is a great method to streamline personnel and field activities that directly affect a farm's bottom line.
- gives prompt, precise directions to all employees, preventing lost time due to misunderstandings.
- real-time monitoring of employee performance for increased efficacy.
- collects precise operational information for upcoming decision-making.
- analyzes gains in productivity and worker performance.
- monitors the utilization and telematics of the equipment.
4) Improve Inventory and Financial
It might be challenging to maintain track of harvest inventory that has yet to be sold as well as existing resources and supplies in large farm budgets. A farm's overall budget may become more complicated if profitability is broken down by crop, field, or management technique.
Using farm management software simplifies all the intricate financial and inventory management requirements of a normal agricultural enterprise, increasing revenue as a result of reduced costs.
- manages crops inventory to maximize the most lucrative times to make sales and optimizes inventory management to minimize losses or overpurchasing of commodities.
- organizes agricultural finances, payables, and receivables, and provides total management.
- analyzes crop, variety, and field profitability to put the emphasis on better-performing decisions and methods.
5) Secure Traceability and Compliance
Farmers must be able to swiftly and precisely demonstrate that they have met with the rules and criteria governing safe food production, since regulatory compliance is on the rise and consumer demands for traceability in the food supply are growing.
Farm and growers can access premium markets and prices by using farm management software to manage traceability and regulatory needs.
- reduces reporting time by gathering and recording all data for traceability.
- creates direct, seamless reporting for standards, certifications, regulators, and markets from your operations.
By introducing QR traceability codes, satisfies transparency standards.
6) Ongoing Agricultural Practices Improvement
For its methods, the agricultural and food producing sector is being extensively examined. The safety, environmental friendliness, and fair treatment of farm employees are all things that consumers want to know about the food they eat.
Better data enables farmers and growers to make more educated decisions that will enhance their agricultural, food safety, and even worker management practices, resulting in improved soil health, biodiversity, more nutrient-rich and secure harvests, and a safe and content workforce.
- provides growers with the information they need to support their investment in better practices by analyzing the optimum techniques for each crop, variety, and field.
- defines standards that all farms and staff should adhere to.
Contains information that is used to assess and support a farm's carbon footprint and carbon sequestration.
7) Make Farm Administration simpler
The paperwork is not the least, though! For years, farmers and growers kept track of their farm management, bookkeeping, and administration using scrawled notebooks, sacks of receipts, and endless Excel spreadsheets. Farm management software unifies all of the "paperwork" associated with a farm business into a single application.
Regular administrative activities are made simple and effective with farm management software, saving money and making them convenient for farm employees.
One location houses all farm data.
There is data in the cloud. It is accessible from any location and on any device.
Nothing was lost.
With only one click, data and reports are accessible, saving time.