Field Scouting made Intelligent by FarmERP for World’s Leading Avocado Producer
Introduction
A renowned fresh produce agribusiness in South Africa, with sustainability at its core, was on the lookout for solutions to refine its field scouting capabilities. Along with being the leading avocado supplier globally, this enterprise also offers mango, litchi, lime, and pecan.
Observing, identifying and eliminating various pests and diseases was a significant challenge for this fresh produce supplier. It desperately needed to refine and bolster its field scouting operations. That’s when FarmERP joined the supplier as its digital farm management partner and eliminated the major obstacles in the field scouting activities.
Challenge
- The fresh produce supplier faced a lack of expertise and technology, which was needed to carry out field scouting operations efficiently.
- With no geo-tagging of plots, trees and other assets, remote monitoring of each and every tree, plot, etc was not possible.
- Keeping track of the pest or disease history of a particular plot or tree was extremely difficult.
- Finding the exact location of pests, diseases, and deficiencies across the large-sized and widely-spread farmland was a backbreaker.
- Even when a pest or disease was found by a field supervisor, the process of making that information available to agri-experts and getting their advice to solve the problem was quite time-consuming.
Approach
FarmERP evaluated the existing processes of the fresh produce supplier. After understanding the entire farm management functioning, especially the field scouting activities, FarmERP devised certain measures to improve the scouting operations of the agribusiness. As fruit crops are highly susceptible to a variety of pests, weeds and deficiencies, the improved field scouting activities suggested by FarmERP focused on bolstering the pest management efforts of the agribusiness.
- FarmERP came up with tried-and-tested digital strategies to help the fresh produce supplier efficiently carry out general, tree as well as trap scouting activities.
- Details about the potential pests, diseases and deficiencies that are more likely to be found in fresh fruit crops were pre-defined in the FarmERP software.
- FarmERP geo-tagged every tree, plot and trap across the farmland to remotely monitor the type and number of pests on a specific tree, plot or trap.
- Farm managers are now able to assign field scouting tasks to supervisors on a daily basis, through the FarmERP software or application.
- FarmERP system also began capturing weather details at the farm location to predict and prevent potential pest attacks and crop diseases.
Benefits
With FarmERP’s support, the fresh produce supplier streamlined its field scouting activities. This empowered the agribusiness to make well-informed decisions and keep its crops protected from pests, diseases and deficiencies. With the planning, maps, production, analytics, etc modules, FarmERP transformed the field scouting capabilities of the fresh produce supplier.
- Whenever a pest or disease is found, the field supervisor is able to quickly record appropriate information about it through the FarmERP application.
- The name and category of the pest or disease as well as the number of pests found on a specific tree, plot or trap can be traced through the FarmERP software.
- A new tree, plot or trap can be easily geo-tagged with the help of FarmERP application.
- FarmERP’s field scouting feature helped the fresh produce supplier to accurately estimate crop health, growth stage and populations of any pests, diseases, or deficiencies.
- The agribusiness is now able to bring all the collected data on a single map platform along with photographs for analysis which enabled the agronomist to make better decisions.
- With remote access to the number of pests and their category, senior agronomists or other agri experts are able to prescribe appropriate actions to effectively mitigate the pest or disease threats.
- The ability to assign and track field scouting tasks through the FarmERP application has made the process more transparent and efficient.
- By keeping track of weather conditions, FarmERP encouraged the fresh produce supplier to carry out climate-smart farming, thereby yielding outstanding crops.