At one time, says Bill Dinu, farmers greased their tractors when they remembered.
Now, he’d like them to use a computer program to track equipment maintenance schedules. And he’d prefer it if they used Combine, a program developed by Regina-based Farmware Corporation.
Dinu, the company’s marketing director, said farmers represent a “highly visible and definable market segment,” and that makes them a target for companies developing new products.
“If you’re not there now, you’re just not going to be there,” Dinu said, adding the farm software market is expected to grow.
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“Farms are becoming larger, farmers more sophisticated with multiple interests” because they have diversified, Dinu said. “You just can’t manage that out of your coveralls.”
Eric Marshall, who owns Microdesign Technologies in Acadia Valley, Alta., agrees.
“The way farming is going, getting bigger … it’s more difficult to keep stuff in their heads,” he said.
Marshall, after several years spent in the computer industry in the city, also sees his new software as a way to return to his rural roots.
“I’m a high-tech guy,” he said. “I can provide something back with my expertise.”
His product is Land Mapper, which allows farmers to measure and calculate the area of irregular pieces of land, wetlands and other areas using a scanned aerial photo. It has been available since January.
“A lot of my friends and/or acquaintances are farmers and 50 percent, if not more, have computers,” Marshall said. Most are using them for accounting and record keeping, but they told him they needed a mapping tool.
He said his software is important for things like crop insurance coverage or if the land is rented or custom-worked.
Farmers can also, by using a database, click on a piece of land on a computerized map and obtain records on fertilizer use, soil conditions and chemical application.
Farmware’s Combine software offers multiple functions and links them together. Any work done in one of six modules will appear in the others, Dinu said.
For example, an equipment purchase will show up in inventory, loan information and payables.
“You only have to enter the information once and then it’s available everywhere,” said Dale Fuhr, a student working on the product as part of his co-op work term.
The six modules include: connectivity, which links farmers to information they want; land management, a field administration program that uses bitmaps developed from aerial photos; operations, which includes maintenance scheduling, repair cost data and storage, volume and transportation information; marketing, which tracks information for crops and livestock; forecasting, which predicts accounting and operational information; and financial management, a full-featured accounting program.
Combine is being tested by farmers this summer and is expected to be released in fall.
“I think it will sell itself,” Dinu said. ” I don’t think farmers want to sit there inputting data. We’re not trying to make computer wizards out of these guys. We’re just trying to make them better farm managers.”
