Smartphone Apps Aiding Farmers
Posted by Unknown in Agriculture and Farming, Information Technology, Research and Technology on Tuesday, 29 January 2013
APPS are quickly becoming vital farm tools, writes CIMARA PEARCE
Gone are the days of having to walk down to the back paddock to check how many head of cattle you've got grazing there.
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So too are the days of trying to guess what the weather is going to do.
Today's
smartphone technology and the multitude of agriculture-related iPhone
and iPad applications on the market mean regular weather updates and
farming information is literally at farmers' fingertips.
With
more people embracing the technology, and a range of farm management
apps coming on to the market, it might not be long before farmers swap
their notebooks for smartphones.
One of the latest to attract rave reviews from farmers is the Elders weather app.
It has had more than 12,000 downloads since being released late last year.
The
application has a 4.5-star rating in Apple's app store and, at $1.99,
has many in the agriculture industry labelling it the best of its kind
on the market.
Elders
sales marketing and supply chain general manager Mark Geraghty said the
decision to take the respected Elders weather website and turn it into
an app was an easy one.
"Elders weather is a very popular website and lot of our clients and non-clients use it every day," he said.
"Farming
is not about sitting in front of a computer and our clients need the
convenience of being able to check the weather at their fingertips.
"With
smartphone technology now used so widely, both in urban and rural
Australia, it was a natural progression to move to this technology."
Coolac farmer Jock Graham helped pioneer another popular new app: F-Track Live.
It is an on-the-go farm management program that is ideal for use by multiple farm workers wanting to access information.
"We're
on a farm out here at Coolac, near Gundagai, and we've got cattle,
sheep and crops here and I guess I do a lot of the cropping work and it
was spawned out of that," Jock said.
"I
was away on the tractor somewhere, and I didn't know what the livestock
numbers were and what paddocks they were in, because I had someone else
doing that.
"I
thought we could just make one, so went down the road of finding out
what you have to do and got a group of farmers who thought the idea was
pretty good and they backed it ... and then I found someone who could
develop it."
With
more than 450 people registering for the program's free 30-day trial,
the response had been "really positive so far", Jock said.
Smartphone
technology is also being embraced by agriculture groups looking to
promote their messages. Meat and Livestock Australia released several
applications last year, including Aussie Lamb and Beef Essentials, both
aimed at identifying cuts of meat and providing recipe ideas.
Jock said he thought more farmers were realising the benefits of using smartphones and iPads to help with day-to-day farm life.
"Three
years ago, I didn't have any kind of smartphone and since grabbing one,
I think I use the internet on it more than I use the phone," he said.
"I
think people are really starting to embrace it because everything has
become wireless and it all links in really well and it's just really
good technology."
