Nutrient Management Plans as a SAAS

[AR Enviro]

Don't Panic.. I'm not trying to sell you anything as a new poster.

I need your help with nutrient management plans as software as a service. I know there are options out there eg. Gatekeeper and a simple Excel sheet can be effective but I'm trying to help predominately small to medium livestock farmers who unfortunately are going to be required to have an NMP in place (especially over here in NI with the Lough Neagh situation).

I'm trying to develop simple software to provide these farmers with a cost-effective in-house solution, I can do up an NMP but I don't particularly enjoy doing them, and truthfully I need to be charging more for the time spent on them and I fully understand that they aren't cost-effective for the farmer.

This is where I need your help and opinions -Are you after a simple box-tick solution or something with more detail that can be useful as it can be asset to your business? What extra information do you want to record?

One of the initial PITA with software is loading all the field information, My thought is a web-based app where you could upload via CSV as most could easily copy and paste field no's and information from elsewhere.

Below is a link to a simple Slurry Nutrient Calculator that I recently built to refresh my coding skills >

https://arenviro.co.uk/nutrient-management/slurry-nutrient-calculator/

If I had something like this ^ with options for artificial / FYM applications and where you could select your fields etc on a web app, would it be something you would use? or am I overthinking?

All opinions good and bad welcome.

 

[Boysground]

Most of the software built for arable farmers is not good enough for livestock farmers. It needs to handle both bag fertiliser and manures well. The thing that is most lacking is available N P K. Nvz records need total N the farmer needs available. Navigate Pro is worth looking at as a start to your project, it does both but it needs to be made much more user friendly.

I have ended up using greenlight grower for most of my records and navigate for the manures. This is the best solution for me so farm but is far from perfect.

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[AR Enviro]

Thanks, yea I hear you about the available N,P,K, it's just very hard to gauge just how far to go in detail and to keep it user-friendly with a clean UI.

 

[Boysground]

For me to change software available nutrients is essential.

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[AR Enviro]

For me to change software available nutrients is essential.

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I assume that you carry out your own slurry analysis?

 

[clemmo]

It’s possible to build your own spreadsheet as I have done

but it’s serious work in terms of formula ( it took me months to write )

 

[Headless chicken]

Google earth has everything mapped. If you make it visual it’s easy. So you just select the fields you’ve spread on. Should be easyish to link back into a spreadsheet then

 

[Boysground]

I assume that you carry out your own slurry analysis?

Yes also use rb209 figures

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[AR Enviro]

It’s possible to build your own spreadsheet as I have done

but it’s serious work in terms of formula ( it took me months to write )

I have my own fully coded spreadsheet workbook that I use for doing NMP's currently but I couldn't give it out to anyone and try to explain how to use it - as even I'm confused about the code that I used a few years ago.

 

[upnortheast]

Seen a NMP produced by Gatekeeper the other day.
56 bloody pages, 2 / field. Lots of duplicated info on each page

Whilst it may satisfy an inspection, as an on farm tool to record fert / manure it was very poor IMO.

Designed by someone with no practical experience it seemed