Precision Farm Management: From Uncertainty to Profitability

It has been argued that farming is a type of gambling, and in recent years more and more farmers worldwide have been experiencing hard times for various reasons, resulting in reduced profitability.In order to reverse this trend and minimize the ensuing risk, many farmers have realized that they must find ways to make growing produce more efficient at all stages of the process. The best way to reduce production and labor costs is to adopt ?precision agriculture? methods. This approach uses new technologies for data gathering and processing, enabling farmers to use resources precisely in the production process ? whether regarding irrigation and fertilization or managing labor resources, quality control or output management.These concepts are borrowed from production process management in an industrial factory, and in recent years farmers and analysts as well have indeed realized that the key to efficiency and increased output may be found in relating to the farm as a production facility. Ori Ganot and Yoram Gommershtadt, two of the four founders and owners of?PickApp Farming Ltd., have personally experienced this reality. As owners of a farm that has gone through challenging years of raising peppers, whose price has plummeted due to fluctuations of currency exchange rates, they understood that the only area that can be controlled is labor, which constitutes about 40% of their overall costs. In other words, only by making labor more efficient will they succeed in continuing to manage the farm profitably. PickApp has developed software for making farms more efficient, a management tool that enables the farmer to measure farming activity, primarily such as is performed by laborers, and is therefore intended especially for labor-intensive crops such as vegetables, herbs, berries, deciduous and citrus fruits. Examples of system operationDuring harvest time, each crate is marked with a barcode which has its unique ID. Before the crate of produce is loaded onto the trailer, the worker scans the barcode using a dedicated application. This scan uploads to the cloud-based system all information connected with the harvest of that same crate (and block/sub-block/row), including information about the picker, production and output.?In case other agro-technical activities are involved, each row of plants is marked with a barcode that indicates its location within the plot. Upon conclusion of treatment, the barcode is scanned, thus monitoring work progress at the worker level.