Software Farm Assistant

[danhillcode]

Hi Guys,

I am creating software to help farmers in Africa, I am trying to find features that would be useful for farmers in general please can you suggest any ideas? I have some basic mapping features but anymore ideas and problem areas in arable farming would be really useful.

Kind regards,
Dan Hill

 

[Briantee]

Is this open source software?

 

[danhillcode]

Hi, Thanks for your quick response. I was not thinking to make it open as I need to fund it's development and having it open would make it difficult to get financial support to grow the features. I am open to any suggestions you have though.

 

[Northern farmer]

You had better make it cheap if your idea is to fund it by Afrcan farmers. We European farmers hardly can afford existing commercial applications. We prefer free applications like AgOpenGPS.

I cannot think of features that African farmers would seek, could ask my son who has spent a couple of years in the poor part of Africa. These people hardly use tractors and are not after auto-steer or even mapping but more like apps that help to trade there crops, make buyers meet the sellers and find the right price for their products.

If you are not after the poor regions of Africa, why are you after Africa instead of the global market. You must have some thoughts on the topics that you consider having commercial interest. You would probably get some useful feedback if you would explain a bit more about your thoughts.

 

[danhillcode]

Yeah I am thinking it needs to be cheap to have an affect on the majority of farming out there.

If you could ask your son that would be amazing, any feedback at the moment is great as it will have a knock on affect in helping.

I am starting to think a trading platform for their products may be needed as a commercial aspect. However, what my aim with it really is, is to increase the farms food production through technology. I started to think sensors may help them out there combined with a platform that could use forecasting and predictive models to increase output. This was my thought going in but need to develop the idea more.

 

[Briantee]

Sorry, I know very little about software, hardware, or applications of general farming that could be suggested to be incorporated into commercial software to be sold to farmers of Africa.