Work Smarter, Not Harder - Five Apps To Make Your Farming Life Easier
In today’s world, everyone is trying to squeeze 26 hours of work into a 24-hour day — and cut costs at the same time. When trying to climb this never-ending hill, technology can be a game changer. With the birth of smart phones and tablets, technology is literally at our fingertips. Going hand in hand with mobile technology are the programs–or apps–that have been developed to do everything from remember our grocery lists to give us the location of our machinery in the field. With the touch of a finger, you can now access running harvest totals, specific chemical mixtures, and even track location, working hours, and routine maintenance records of your equipment.
Here are five apps that can make your farming life easier this summer and fall. All of these apps are available on Android and Apple iOS platforms, and are free of charge. Head over to Googleplay or iTunes to get them today!
Simplot Spray Guide — can help applicators with accurate mixing processes and maintaining detailed spray logs. With over 1100 products, from 17 manufactures, in the database finding your favored brands shouldn’t be an issue. The guide can remember mixing orders containing up to 19 products – from the categories of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, adjuvant, and foliar nutrition. The spray guide will record exact field location, weather information, and start and stop times. There is also a notes section to add additional information. This program offers product descriptions and mixing precautions.
TeeJet Spray Select — is a straightforward program to help you select the best nozzle for your broadcast and fertilizer spraying needs. Choosing the correct nozzle takes just minutes. Enter your speed, spacing, target rate, and by selecting ideal droplet size, you can quickly obtain a list of recommended nozzles. A brief features section is also available for each recommended nozzle. Measurements are available in both U.S. and Metric units, with information accessible in six languages. TeeJet offers 25 broadcast and four fertilizer nozzles.
eFarmer — is a simple program packed full of useful mapping tools. With eFarmer you are apply to create electronic maps of multiple fields at one time. With the assistance of GPS (global positioning system) or using the map editor tool, you can measure the area and perimeter of fields. This app has the ability to keep track of crop rotation history for multiple fields, and the dates field tasks – fertilizing, planting, and harvesting – were performed in each field. eFarmer also allows the farmer to take specific notes on a field as points of interest of the maps.
Extreme Beans — is a two-fold app, developed by the United Soybean Board, to help you plan for future crops. The first piece of this program is a calculator that estimates your optimum seed rate by entering in your region, cost per seed and price per bushel. The second calculator lets you plug in your input costs to determine the amount of bushels needed to pay for the inputs. In this section it actually breaks down how many bushels are needed to pay for each individual cost you entered.
Ag PhD Field Guide — will help you identify the weeds that appear in you fields throughout the season. With an extensive list of plants, Ag PhD Field Guide covers the majority of possible pests. Each plant type offers multiple photos to help you typecast what you are seeing. Once you are sure you have found the perpetrator, click on the extremely useful “Info” tab to gain more knowledge about the weed you are trying to defeat. Helpful identification tips and general comments will help you plan for a course of action. If your crops are corn, wheat, or soybeans there are separate tabs for these crops that will give you added wisdom on how to eliminate your pest problem.
Technology can make your farming business more productive and run smoothly, but safety also needs to be kept in mind — driving a tractor and using a phone can be just as dangerous as driving a car doing the same.
