How Agriculture Software Assists Farmers?

The Significance of Software Solutions For Farming

Information technologies facilitate people’s lives in various fields of activity. Agriculture is one of them. A laptop, a smartphone or other gadget with specialized software on it will be an excellent support for every farmer, making their business more comfortable, profitable, and reliable. 

We’ll discuss how technology might affect agriculture these days and over the next few years. It’s supposed that mobile app development services will have a significant impact on it. The details that follow should be pretty intriguing to you, so start reading our article to learn more about the subject! 

How Agriculture Software Influences The Future

The experts suggest that the consumption of food and the demand for it as well will be increased in the next 30 years because the planet’s population is growing. It means the current livestock growth and yield-boosting methods may become irrelevant, causing famine and other disasters. How to avoid such a situation?

 

This is the moment when the agriculture software comes to aid. So, we’ll talk more about this notion. 

An example of a software solution for agricultural needs

The agricultural app is a system that assists farmers in solving different issues connected to further agricultural tasks’ accomplishment. Software solutions for farming expedite the procedure while also giving a thorough background for many essential aspects. As a result, there is a higher likelihood that the decision made by a farmer is more precise and accurate, increasing the income.

This type of software covers various farming activities, and we’ve made a list of the common ones:

  • Yield forecasting
  • Risks tracking
  • Planting/harvest time prediction
  • Mitigation of losses
  • Fertilizing/watering the crops
  • Precipitation, etc. 

It’s not the complete list of agricultural stuff the people can perform or track due to the specified software. This way, the smart electronic gadgets become trustworthy friends of each farmer, allowing them to work more effectively. 

How is the software connected to plantations or fields? In what way does all this structure work? First, engineers install a network of sensors on farms collecting data on temperature, humidity, and other variables. Then, the gathered info is processed and saved in the cloud before being sent to a customer (e.g., in a smartphone software application). Additionally, the farmer may use the mobile solutions to remotely control farm equipment from any location. 

An electronic field map with data from many sources is available for viewing by the user. By comparing table sections on a smartphone or tablet, the farmer may track changes in expenses per hectare over time.

It should also be mentioned that nevertheless the technology is convenient for users, only a few of the regions have an opportunity to use it. However, these days, IT specialists work on technology accessibility for everybody.

Software For Farming: Spheres of Application

Agriculture and the information technology industries both have tremendous potential. Specialized farm management software,  portals, and applications were created to give landowners the necessary actual information to run their property and increase profit.

So, below we’ll find out how the agricultural IT solutions correlate with different activity spheres connected to farming. 

Hardware farming machinery can increase their effectiveness due to equipping seeding machines, tractors or combines with GPS, fuel management or water accounting software. However, the existing hardware upgrade is not enough. New technologies require new equipment, such as sensors, weather stations and so on. 

Software industry may provide farmers with products like mobile applications that help with hardware management, optimization, and agricultural production process tracking and performance. These solutions include computerized harvest maps, equipment monitoring systems, and field accounting platforms.

Supplying data. Landowners want access to high-quality information that enables risk management and risk prediction in addition to realistic hardware and software solutions. Farm data governance services and software are currently in more demand for weather predictions, crop diseases, and cost generation analyses.

The geoinformation system (GIS) is a tool for operating with geographic data about fields and other geographically situated objects. Users of GIS may develop and manage field and cadastral maps as well as acquire the required insights for making choices, etc. 

GIS also enables it to operate machinery and activities in addition to monitoring fields and crops (performing machinery movement, fuel consumption, a number of fertilizers, for example). Furthermore, an extra services connection can be used to increase GIS capability.

Also Read: How Artificial Intelligence does impact the Future Technology

In order to conduct an agricultural audit, it is necessary to create an electronic database of land parcels and identify both their qualitative and quantitative aspects. As a result, agro-holdings can streamline paper flow connected to the administration of these land parcels and streamline a range of farming activities.

Information support entails acquiring and interpreting the data required for a more sensible use of fertilizer, water, seed, etc. Such info is gathered from a variety of sources, including satellite pictures, soil investigations conducted in a lab, accessible databases, and registrations and enables predicting agricultural yields and the creation of analytical reports.


The common purposes agricultural IT solutions are used for

Farming Software Development: What Should You Know About? 

The market is full of agricultural solutions from different companies. So, when you decide on a necessity of a software application for your farming business, you should firstly define whether it will be a ready-made solution or a custom software. 

A ready-made (another called off-the-shelf) solution is already created to satisfy the common needs of farmers. It also has a standard set of features to perform particular operations and may be used to satisfy the short-term needs. However, in case you need an IT solution fully fitting to your business requirements, you need to apply to a custom software creation. 

A custom software is a unique one made according to your particular requirements to satisfy your own agricultural business’ needs. This solution creation can be more expensive than the ready-made system, but all the expenditures will be paid off. 

Below, we’ll enlighten the basics you should perform after the decision to create custom farming software. 

Step 1. Make your research

In order to have a perfect-functioning piece of software, you need to care about it yourself. Think out the purposes of your upcoming app, your potential customers’ needs and functionality to satisfy them. Moreover, study your market niche to have a proper understanding of how to build in it, your future competitors, and so on. 

Step 2. Apply to professionals

This step implies you should find specialists that will give a proper embodiment to your agriculture software concept. It can be done in two ways:

  • Gathering an in-house team is finding and hiring IT experts yourself in order to be further united into a team to work on your project. 
  • Collaborating with an outsourcing software development partner means contacting an IT company with a deep expertise in agricultural software creation and starting a cooperation with them. The outsourcing option is considered as the most cost-effective even for entrepreneurs on a tight budget, and we’ll tell you a little more how the software creation will pass in such a cooperation.

Step 3. Discuss the development and start it 

Remember: your notes of a future app design or feature sets are important to help the specialists look at the future product from your sight. However, you may come to them with a raw concept of your software, and they will perform all the preparations themselves. Moreover, they will discuss your software idea with you more to build an agricultural solution as precisely as possible. 

They will also care about the feature set creation, design matters (starting from wireframes), composition of a team responsible for such an app development, and other details. 

After the upcoming app design is created screen-by-screen, the outsourcing software specialists start coding the functionality. Typically they create MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of your future farming software, which  includes only the most essential functionality for a proper app functioning. Then they add more features that will make app usage more comfortable and straightforward. 

All the functionality is thoroughly checked by QA specialists. In case something goes wrong, they make bug reports for the developers to fix the bug, and after the bug fixing they continue their activity.

Step 4. Integrate solution to the company flow, and enjoy the result

All the flow isn’t finished yet after the farming software development is ended up. After that, the outsourcing experts launch the software and help you integrate it into your company flows. If you are satisfied with the income, they give you all the project materials and help you train your employees to appropriately use the built solution. 

Then, their function is to continually upgrade your agricultural solution with new features, and fix the arisen bugs to ensure its seamless work. 

Summing up

The agricultural software creation requires profound expertise in this field. A skilled outsourcing software vendor can help you. The vendor’s specialists will help you create a powerful, customer-friendly and profitable farming application with an exceptional and easy-to-use interface. The developed solution will help you boost your business, attract more customers and gain a competitive edge.

Author’s bio:

Yuliya Melnik is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It is a web and mobile app development company in Ukraine. She is passionate about innovative technologies that make the world a better place and loves creating content that evokes vivid emotions.

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