while it was more difficult than using dedicated

FARMERS can look beyond expensive, designed-for-agriculture mobile apps when looking for products that can help their business according to farm technology consultant Richard Heath.

There was a good fit for other apps designed for broader uses to work within a farm system.

“In the scheme of things, the Australian agricultural market is only fairly small, so developers need to have fairly high costs for the product to make a profit," Mr Heath said.

“Other apps not designed specifically for agriculture can also be really useful and don’t cost much.”

Mr Heath, a former farmer on the Liverpool Plains in NSW, said free or cheap apps and systems could be used as communication or data collection tools in particular.

Speaking at last week’s Birchip Cropping Group (BCG) expo, Mr Heath said products like Dropbox, which allows users to store information in ‘the cloud’, or via a web-based server, could be useful both in terms of access to information and sharing the data.

“Storing information in the cloud means you can have access to it anywhere, and it is safely stored, you don’t have to worry about a faulty hard drive or memory stick,” he said.

He said growers could share information with their adviser to allow the adviser to give timely suggestions, rather than having to have them physically come out to the property.

Other useful products include Evernote, an annotation app.

“Farmers are famous for always having a notebook by their side,Cheap Dedicated Server this is just the new version of it, and again, it has the advantage of you not having to rummage around the ute to find it,” Mr Heath said.

He said Evernote gave farmers a chance to record ideas or concerns in real time.

“The notes can be sent to advisers and then the advisers can comment and send it back and it can be saved as a record,” he said.

Even basic products such as Google Earth can be used.

“The geo-locator in your phone is surprisingly accurate.”

Mr Heath said while it was more difficult than using dedicated map-making software it was possible to review things like yield maps using free mapping products.

However, there is a limit for the use of technology in terms of infrastructure.

“Connectivity is a key, and many free apps rely on connectivity," he said.

“With farmers often operating in patches with bad service, most of the dedicated agricultural apps have an offline mode as well.”
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