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Along with the normal business office software tools (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Lotus123, etc.,) we also rely on some more specialized pieces of software.
For many of our software needs I like to use freeware rather than buy every little piece of software I need. I rely heavily on Gizmo's website to provide evaluations and recommendations for about anything a guy might need. For web stuff we use Firefox, for our firewall/AV needs we use ZoneAlarm and for anti-spyware work I use SuperAntiSpyware.
For our Precision Agriculture needs, we've been using Mapinfo since the late 1990's. Mapinfo is a powerful object based GIS package with a programming language structured around BASIC. This is a "general" GIS sytem in that it wasn't created for any specific industry or application. In the big picture, this makes it extremely powerful but also means it has a big learning curve as one pretty much has to figure out everything on their own about their specific application.
In 2007, we moved much of our needs to Easi-Suite from MapShots. This program is specific to agriculture and has modules for dealing with spatial, tabular and business related data . My primary goals for using this software were 1) to have a common location and structure for storing all information specific to our farm, 2)to have a color-blind piece of software that can read and write the unique file formats found in most OEM and aftermarket applications, and 3) have a comprehensive system to assist in farm planning, inventory management, logistics operations and that provides for quick assessments of fields/operations/locations, etc.,
This shows the Easi-Suite main window with one field selected and it's associated field boundary and other data.
Digging into this field, I can look at planted hybrid information in terms of where different hybrids were planted and what populations were used.
I can also see similar information for the fertilizer application operation on this field and ultimately I can see the associated yield map.In Easi-Suite all of this information is tied to each field making report and map generation quick and easy. Ultimately, I will move a lot of my advanced data processing tasks over to Easi-Suite from MapInfo, but I still have a lot to learn about Easi-Suite first.
We also rely on Farmworks SiteMate VRA for our handlhelds and some in-field work as well as some other more specialized software packages to numerous to give them all a mention here.
Excel is probably the most used program on the farm as it's used for everything from simple data logging to advanced statistical analyses of activities. Excel can be used to assist economic or engineering decisions as well as for farm planning (agronomically and economically).
Excel spreadsheet I built to look at how pumps and economics react to shutting off boom sections on a fertilizer rig.There are many custom spreadsheets available for free download on the web that already have much of the "heavy lifting" done in terms of making a decision. We use these frequently and the modify them to our own needs or if we have to we will create them from scratch. Either way, it's a lot of fun.
We have been using accrual accounting on this farm since the mid 1980's. This is the only way to know where a farm "is" at any given time in the year. We use a combination of multiple spreadsheets (for inventory, planning, making projections) along with a farm specific add-in to QuickBooks.
As the farm expands and demands on knowledge continue to increase (due to the complexities of notill management and precision agricultural tools), the time spent in the office increases every year. We are off setting this increase in time demand by "bringing" the office with us in the field. Laptops and Smartphones are changing what we can get done away from the office.
Last year, we put remote control systems on all of the pivots. Using Wagnet, we can monitor pivot movement, location, water pressure and other attributes as well as can start or shut down the pivot and/or change the speed of the system. This can all be done via a web interface that can run in the office, on a mobile laptop or even on a smartphone.
Example page showing one of the pivots being monitored.
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