Farm Produce Manager. Basic Crop Scheduling

Transcription

1 Farm Produce Manager Getting Started in Basic Crop Scheduling An Educational Guide December

2 This guide covers all the basics required to gather and organize your crop data, schedule your next season s crops, and produce the key reports to help you execute your schedule. You will see many other data elements that you may find useful for related purposes, but they are not necessary to get started. Try to start with the basics; it is a great first step toward working smarter, not harder and toward greater profitability! Overview Farm Produce Manager: Basic Crop Scheduling includes a Product file or table to collect and organize information about your crops. We start you with 26 typical vegetables; review them to be sure they are consistent with your growing practices, soils and local climate, and easily add others as required. Farm Product Manager (FPM) allows you to keep frequently used terms consistent and to save time in data entry with List Boxes that you can populate, as required. The key List Boxes for the Product and Schedule information are Bed Units, Production UoM and Trays. Scheduling is where you select a specific crop and set dates and quantities. This information is combined with the standard crop planning information from the Product Master file to generate specific crop plantings. Besides setting up your crop data and scheduling, there are a series of reports that help you develop, validate and execute your schedule. We will introduce these key reports. Our goal is that FPM be simple and powerful. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about this document, the related processes or the software involved, please contact us at FarmSupport@ADAKsystems.com Thank you for considering Farm Produce Manager! Product Master Getting Started Now we will go through the basic steps and point out details along the way that are important in scheduling crops on your farm. First Bed Units. Go to Product Definition/List Boxes/Bed Units (Menu options are bold with / between to show navigation). Check to be sure there is a Bed Unit with the same width as your standard bed width by 1 ft long. If not, see Appendix Bed Units for details on setup. In the Product Definition/Products table, commonly called the Product or Crop Master, we start you out with 26 typical vegetables with standards and planning parameters. This vegetable data is provided by Laura Williams, University of Vermont Catamount Farm Manager, based on her experience and study over the last 10 years. The yields are provided with students and new farmers in mind and are considered "conservative," meaning you are a bit more likely to do better than worse, but please review this and the other parameters to align them with your experience and growing practices, and with your farm soils and climate. Each crop s data are based on the variety shown in the Product Master description. 2

3 The following Key Data Elements are required for scheduling and should be reviewed to be sure they are consistent with your situation: Description Product: Keep entries at the crop level of detail here. You will add variety and other details later. Production UoM (unit of measure): How do you measure or count production; this is how this crop will initially be inventoried. Planning Parameters Bed Unit: The initial products come with a typical bed unit, be sure to set to your standard bed unit, if different. See Bed Units in Appendix, if you need to add yours. Planting Method: Pick the way you typically grow this crop Greenhouse or Direct Seed. You can change this method when you schedule a specific planting later. Rows Per Bed: Indicate how many rows this crop will be planted in the selected Bed Unit in the field. If you have multiple bed configurations for a crop, set up multiple Product records, each with its own parameters such as rows per bed, spacing, etc. Production Rate: The quantity, in the Product UoM, that you expect to harvest of good, saleable product per 1 unit (foot or meter) of row length. Direct Seed (Enter this information if you might direct seed, even if you didn t select it above as the preferred method) Direct Seed Rate: Seeds per row unit of length (foot or meter). Field Grow Days DS: Days required from planting seed to harvest start in the field. Greenhouse (Enter this information if you might start in the greenhouse, even if you didn t select this method above as the preferred method) In the greenhouse you will plant seed in at least one tray, then maybe transplant into (potting on) into a second and third tray, and then into the field). For each tray # (1, 2 or 3), as required, enter: Tray #: Select the appropriate tray see Tray Details, in Appendix if you need to add another tray. Tray # Days: The number of days that seeds or transplants are to be in this tray. Tray # Loss Rate: If you expect some cells to fail, put in the decimal amount (0 to.9). Seeds/Cell: Enter the number of seeds you plan to plant in each cell of Tray 1. Harvest Plug Spacing: Enter the full or decimal number of feet or meters planned between plugs or transplants. Field Grow Days GH: The number of days from planting the plug/transplant to harvest start for greenhouse started plants. Harvest Days: The number of days over which you typically plan to harvest this crop, after which the bed will be available to prep for the next planting. 3

4 The previously listed 15 data elements are used for crop scheduling (fewer if you start a crop only by direct seed or only in a greenhouse). The only other data element that can be involved in the scheduling calculation is Field Loss Rate (0-.9 for crops lost in field). We recommend that at first you simply use Production Rate to estimate what your good harvest quantity will be. There are many other data elements, including a number of Note fields that you can update if you d like to. Generally speaking, add any information to each crop record that applies all or most of the time. You will also be able to add planting specific information when you schedule each specific crop planting, including variety, planting specific notes, etc. List Boxes Many of the list boxes are populated with typical entries and only a few adjustments are needed to make them work for you; however, those listed below are involved in scheduling. You can review before starting or go back to a list box and add an entry when you discover it is needed. Be careful not to enter duplicate entries, with minor spelling variations! Scheduling Product UoM: Your primary measuring, counting, inventory UoM, for each crop in the Product Master. Greenhouse: You can simply enter total greenhouse tray capacity in the default greenhouse (NA) if you don t want to be bothered with assigning where trays will be assembled. Otherwise, enter a capacity for each greenhouse you plan to use. Fields: Change NA and add fields to correspond with yours. Also update acreage. Trays: There is a bunch provided. Change names to align with your strategy, if necessary. Be sure the number of cells is correct for each tray. See Trays in Appendix for details. Bed Units: This is an important entry. For accurate acreage calculations, be sure you have the average, center to center width, 1 for length, and Feet or Meter for UoM. This unit of measure sets your UoM for all of this crop s length and width measurements (usually all Bed Units UOM is set to either feet or meter). See Bed Units in Appendix for details. After you have reviewed and updated your Product and List Box data, you can start scheduling your crops. Go to Schedules/Production Schedules/Schedule by Planting Start. Schedule by Planting Start and Schedule by Harvest Start are the same, with all the same crop schedules, with the only difference being they are sorted differently, the first by planting start, the later by harvest start. Depending on what you are looking to do or to determine, viewing one or the other is usually better. From this screen you can add a new planting schedule, filter the schedule to examine some aspect, or modify an existing planting schedule. To add a new planting schedule, click Add New and then select a crop, set a Harvest Date (if you want to schedule from the Planting or Field Start, skip the date now and enter what you want later), enter the quantity you d like to harvest or the number of bed units you d like to allocate to this planting, and then Save Changes. 4

5 FPM now displays the Schedule/Modify screen, so you can make any adjustments or add additional information to the planting you just scheduled. Below are the tab/sections shown and the key data elements you will want to consider: Schedule For Dates: You can change any one of the dates shown and FPM will reschedule the other two based on the current Planting Method and Days shown. For example, if you want to schedule from the Field Start Date (seed planting date for direct seed and date transplanted to field for greenhouse started plants), select this date in the Schedule Update Mode and notice how that date in the screen now has a white background, indicating up can update it. Once you set the new Field Start Date and Save Changes, FMP will schedule forward from the Field Start date to the Harvest Start and backward to the Production Start date (same date for direct seed). Days (Harvest, Field Grow, Tray 1, 2 and/or 3): These days were initially downloaded from the Product Master, based on what you have set the Growing Method to in the Product Master or changed it to on the Process Specific tab here. You can now take control of these days and change any or all of them here (they will no longer be updated by changes in the PM), to adjust for the variety, planting date, field conditions, etc. Quantity Harvest Qty Expected: Changing the quantity here will affect the calculation of seed, trays and eventually bed area required to achieve this quantity based on all the currently set planning parameters. Production Rate: Increasing the Production Rate here will not affect the Harvest Quantity, but it will reduce the number of Bed Units required as you will get more production per row unit of length. Lowering the Production Rate will do the opposite. Note: you can increase or decrease the Production Rate due to local or seasonal variables, for example you might decrease expectations due to a late planting date or unusually dry weather. You might increase it because a more prolific variety is selected. Total Bed Units: Instead of setting Qty as Harvest Qty Expected, you can indicate how many Bed Units you want to allocate to this planting. FPM will then calculate how many plants you have room for and calculate the Harvest Qty Expected, accordingly. Note: You cannot set both Harvest Qty Expected AND Bed Units; one must be dependent on the other. Field Loss Rate: You may also adjust the field loss rate to account for local or seasonal variables, if you like. This is just like adjusting the Productivity Rate, in that a change here will not affect the Qty produced but will affect the bed units needed to produce it. Of course you can go back and reset the bed units to what you had before and the Harvest Qty Expected will then be changed to reflect the new Field Loss Rate. 5

6 Process Specific Planting Method: Change this and the Product Master parameters are brought down for the now selected method. Greenhouse Name: Select from List Box entries, if desired. Greenhouse Table: Enter according to your format if you want to plan at this level of detail. Field Name: Select from List Box entries. Section Bed: Enter according to your format. Note, many enter Field and Section Bed later in the planning process, when considering rotation factors, as well as everything planned and space available. A simple format for this entry is for Section 1 and Bed 1, where the leading 0 allows for up to 99 of either and proper sorting. Variety: Ultimately you will plant a specific variety. If you enter it here, it will show up on reports and in the schedule screens. Variety Description is just for schedule notes. Extended Notes Whatever has been entered on the crop s Product Master will show up in these note fields. You can delete, modify or replace the specific planting notes here. These notes show up on task lists and other reports. The above key data elements are by far the bulk of the commonly used data elements when scheduling. There are some special purpose data elements on Additional Descriptors, the most interesting of which is Supply Status which is updated automatically by Milestone Record Keeping or can be manually updated here. The status then shows up in the schedules and other places. When you have finished making adjustments and additions, click Save Changes and the planting schedule record changes are saved. Schedule As mentioned earlier, the two schedules, Schedule by Field Start and Schedule by Harvest Start contain all the same scheduled planting records and details. Their only difference is the date the schedule is sorted on and grouped by. Besides this option, you can also access specific plantings on either of these schedules by using the Filter. For example, if you type in the year and month ( ) you will see all the planting scheduled to start or harvest in April You may also enter a field or greenhouse name to see all the plantings designated to pass through that area. Note: You must have selected a field or greenhouse on the schedule for this to work! You may start typing a crop or variety and as you type you will see all the records with those letters in the Filter String. For example, Tom will typically show all your tomato plantings. 6

7 Key Reports Here are several key reports that most farmers take advantage of. There are other reports, plus you can export data to do your own ad-hoc analysis and reporting. With each report description are directions to its location in FPM. Seed Report: Gross number of seeds required by current schedule for each Crop and Variety (subtract any prior seeds saved that are available). Task Lists & Recordkeeping/Greenhouse/Reports /Seed Order List Summary Tray Report: Number of trays required by size to support current schedule. Before placing your order, consider how you will deal with fractional trays required, trays onhand from last year, and reuse of trays during the current year. Task Lists & Recordkeeping/Greenhouse/Reports /Tray Order List Summary Greenhouse Utilization: Percent of Greenhouse used by week, based trays passing through the designated greenhouse and the tray capacity entered in Greenhouse List Box for each greenhouse. Schedules/Production Schedules/Reports, Bar Ch /Greenhouse Utilization by week Field Utilization: Percent of Field used by week, based on acreage for each field entered Field List Box and the designated the field on each planting s schedule. Schedules/Production Schedules/Reports, Bar Ch /Field Utilization by week Field Report: Planting locations, if field, section and bed are entered in scheduled plantings. Schedules/Production Schedules/Reports, Bar Ch /Schedules by Field Greenhouse Task List: Info needed to perform greenhouse tasks by week. Schedules/Production Schedules/Reports, Bar C /Consolidated Tray Starts by Wk Field Task List: Info needed to perform field tasks by week. You get the task list sole based on the internal growing model. You get specific field, section and bed locations if they are entered on the planting s schedule. Schedules/Production Schedules/Reports, Bar C /Consolidated Field Starts by Wk Note Do not delay starting this program because you don t have precise data. Enter your best estimates to start with; be conservative if you haven t collected yield data on your farm. Over time, keep better records and you will have better estimates for the future. This is an important step to working smarter, not harder and toward becoming more profitable. 7

8 Appendix Bed Units: Bed Units are the building blocks that help convert area in a field into specific planting beds with easily managed and communicated dimensions and location in Farm Produce Manager. The typical approach is to have a bed unit that matches your standard bed width with a length of 1 (foot or meter what you set in the Bed Unit table becomes the unit of length for all aspects of this crop). This convention allows you to indicate how many Bed Units you want to plant (@ 1, so the same number is also the planting space s bed length) AND for the system to tell you how many Bed Units are required. We start you out with a variety of examples, one of which will work for most farms. If one isn t exactly right for you, then just change an existing Bed Unit that you won t use, instead of adding another you can edit any field in an existing Bed Unit, including its name. Go to Products/List Boxes/Bed Units. Bed Unit Name a unique identifier, clearly meaningful, where shorter is better. Typically width and length are used as being straight forward and simple. Description: This can be used for any description or notes you want. It is not used elsewhere. Length: Required, enter the quantity of feet or meters this particular bed is long. Note: Some define beds that are longer than 1; this can be done when all beds are the same length or when you have minimum planting areas, or minimum bed lengths. Width: Required, enter bed width, center to center, such that the sum of all beds is the entire field width. This is important to account for your tillable acreage. UoM: Required, typically Feet or Meter. Acre Conv. Factor: Required, typically 43,560 for acres or 10,000 for hectares. Sort Order: Not currently used. Can be exported and used in external sorting or reporting. Tray Details: This list box is to define your trays. Go to Products/List Boxes/Trays. Tray Name: Required, a unique identifier that makes it easy to be sure you are selecting the tray you want and know the number of cells in it. Tray Dscr: This can be used for description or notes. It is not used elsewhere. Cells/Tray: Required, this is used in the planning calculation to determine number of seeds required. Sort Order: Not currently used. Can be exported and used in external sorting or reporting. 8

9 Crop Data Collection Form Crop Name UoM (1) Mainly GH or DS Rows/Bed Production Rate (2) Seeds/Foot DS Field Grow Days DS Field Notes (3) Tray 1 # Cells Tray 1 Grow Days Tray 1 Notes (3) Tray 1 Loss Rate (4) Tray1 Seeds/Cell Tray 2 # Cells Tray 2 Grow Days Tray 2 Notes (3) Tray 2 Loss Rate (4) Tray 3 # Cells Tray 3 Grow Days Tray 3 Notes (3) Tray 3 Loss Rate (4) Plug Spacing (5) Field Grow Days GH Harvest Days Harvest Notes (3) Notes: 1. UoM is the Unit of Measure (lb, ear, heads, bunches, pint, etc.)that you typically count or measure this crops production in. 2. How many UoM (lb, ear, bunches) do you expect to harvest in saleable quality of this crop per ROW Foot on average? 3. Notes are optional, everything else is required unless you will plant using only one Growing Method. There are many other data elements on the Product Master that are not shown here that are also optional. 4. Loss Rate is how many cells in Tray X you expect to lose, expressed as a decimal (0.0 to 0.9) 5. Plug spacing is feet or meters between plugs. 9