FARMDATA has come a long way since its inception in 2013. In 2014 our genius web developers improved the mobile version to look more like a modern app, created new pages for compost records, seed orders, packing house inventory and more, and added many features to increase the speed of data entry and reporting. Thanks to a grant from Northeast SARE (grant ONE14-225), we ran a beta testing trial with three partner farms, and received design support from Pennsylvania Certified Organic. If you've ever been interested in adding digital crop records management to your farm, now is a good time to take another look at FARMDATA! You can take a tour of the live Dickinson College Farm site at http://farmdata.dickinson.edu/guest.php (11/11/24: Website not available, not archived on wayback machine.) For the most interesting results, set dates to 2014 to see that season's data.
FARMDATA is available for free downloads at sourceforge. This page includes a wiki with a users manual and installation guide. To install a new FARMDATA account, you will need to work with your web master or a tech savvy friend to do the initial setup on your existing website or a new web server. Once the code is in place, there is a new account setup phase that we designed to be quick and painless.
A revised version, FarmData2, compatible with farmOS, can be found at github.
Other options are being discussed - if you are an existing customer of Small Farm Central, please contact them to express your interest as they may begin hosting FARMDATA for their clients. Attendance at the free Webinar is another way to get info about account setup.
As with any tech project, FARMDATA is a work in progress, but we are happy with the system and invite you to give it a try. If you see a way to make improvements, find a web programmer and add them to the open source code for all to benefit! This winter, with two years of crop records in the database, we were able to quickly make farm management decisions that should improve our efficiency and profitability in the coming year. Digital records are super handy once you have them, and there's no more painless way to collect records than on the fly in the growing season. Ditch the clipboards, skip a step and go right into the database. We have found that delegating data collection to as many trusted people as possible is a recipe for success - it is unlikely that a busy farm manager will have the time needed to grab every harvest record as it happens.
A Webinar with an introduction to FARMDATA is available here. (11/11/24: Website not available, not on wayback machine.)
