Harvest: documenting yields optimally

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Harvest: documenting yields optimally

– a blog post by topfarmplan –

Regardless of which fruit is harvested – the yields must be documented after the harvest. What used to be laboriously written down by hand can now be done digitally and easily from a cell phone.

Crop field cards help with documentation

The most practical way to do this is with digital crop field cards. They are superior to manual recording on paper or in Excel in many respects: they cannot be lost and are easier to handle than Excel for the untrained. Often, digital punch lists also offer a mobile version for smartphones. This eliminates the need for many trips to the office, because documentation can be done on the go.

With top farmplan, for example, crop rotation, fertilization and crop protection can be recorded for each year and each field in addition to yields. In addition to yield, you can also enter moisture and crude protein content. A notes field gives you the freedom to make additional entries – such as the number of straw bales. If you sell your crop directly, top farmplan gives you the option of entering a recipient and the quantity delivered. If you store your harvest yourself, you can also record that.

Track changes in yield

If you document your yields over the years in a field index such as in top farmplan, the deviations can be traced quickly and easily. By making entries in the notes field, you can determine which special features occurred in the harvest year – e.g. how much rain fell or whether you made a change in your management.

Save time with your phones and co.

Nowadays, you can also record your yields on the go using an app – so you can even record the results while you’re still harvesting. When weighing the last trailer or assembling the cutterbar, pull out your smartphone and enter your yield. You already have more time for other things, such as the family.

Also digitize documents

With some providers, you can also directly store relevant documents such as delivery bills or invoices online in a cloud. top farmplan also offers the option of providing documents with keywords (so-called “tags”). For example, if you receive an invoice from your contractor that relates to the current harvest, you can tag it with the keywords “barley harvest” and “2019”. If you later search for “barley harvest 2019”, you will be shown all documents that you have tagged with this tag.

More security against data loss

However, the simple documentation of your harvest directly from the field is by far not the only advantage. Still skeptically criticized by some farmers, the entered data is stored online in a cloud. However, this has the immense advantage that you can access your data from an unlimited number of devices and you are better protected against data loss. If, for example, a cell phone breaks down, the punch list can be called up on a new cell phone within a few minutes and all the data is available again in the same view. By the way, at top farmplan your data is not stored just anywhere, but in a particularly secure manner at a German high-security data center in accordance with German data protection law.

Our tip: Start choosing a suitable software for documenting your harvest at an early stage. If you have already decided before the next harvest, you can still start with the documentation during the harvest.

By the way, you can test top farmplan for 90 days free of charge. The test account gives you full access to all functions for 90 days. After the 90 days, you can continue to use all functions for just €9.95 per month.

We wish you every success with the next harvest!

– Your team from topfarmplan