Farming has come a long way from the time we used beasts to drag the plow across the field. Now entire acres can be covered in minutes with the use of automated machinery and digital mapping.
There’s no doubt that technology is now capable of making our jobs much easier and more efficient regardless of the type of farm or what is being produced.
Even if you prefer the more traditional methods of farming, you can’t deny that technology can improve farming operations. Boring tasks like generating invoices, tracking expenses, and keeping records can all now be done via specialized software.
This not only vastly reduces the likelihood of errors being made, but it helps you better identify areas for improvement and ways in which you can reduce costs. And given the pressure farms are under, who wouldn’t want that?
But what types of software are available, and which one is right for your farm?
In this article, we’ve identified some of the best agricultural software on the market today. Take a look and see which will be the best fit for your farm.
In a Nutshell
| Provider | Type | Best for | Cost |
| FarmERP | Farm management | Large farms and ranches | By quote |
| AgCinect | Farm management | Multi-entity farms and livestock farming | By quote |
| Agworld | Farm management | Crop farming | From $1,995/year |
| TractionAg | Accounting | Large farms and advanced financial management | From $950/year |
| Ambrook | Accounting | Smaller farms and basic financial management | By quote |
| AgrTrak | Labor tracking and management | Small farms with hired labor | From $2,000/year |
| PickApp | Labor tracking and management | Labor-intensive farming with hired labor | $500/year |
| Trace AgTech | Produce traceability | Contract farmers, processors, and exporters | By quote |
| Sencrop | Weather forecasting | Outdoor growers and producers | By quote |
| Herdwatch | Livestock management | Livestock farming | From $16.58/month |
FarmERP: Farm Management
Best for: Large farms and ranches with multiple locations that manage end-to-end production.
FarmERP is an extremely comprehensive suite of farm management software. However, it goes beyond simple management and helps farms become sustainable as well as cost-effective.
Driven by two of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals – zero hunger and climate change, FarmERP harnesses technology to ensure better farming outcomes and reduced food scarcity for all.
The software consists of many different modules. You can pick and choose the ones you want and create a bespoke system that works precisely in line with your farm’s needs.
Here’s just some of what it can do:
- Farm profiling: Map out the crop, land, and infrastructure of your farm along with geo-coordinates for every part. Includes tree encoding for horticulture plantations.
- Contract farming: Optimize contracts for procurement and recording of goods to secure better market exposure and improved outcomes.
- Performance tracking: To ensure correct salary calculations and labor management, the software provides supervisor tracking to accurately map employee performance.
- Planning: Use FarmERP to create crop schedules and best farming practices for your produce types. Use the task calendar to organize and allocate jobs out to workers for more efficient scheduling.
- Production: Track production and farm resources and simplify field observation through video and photography.
- Post-production: Optimize post-harvest processes such as quality control, grading, cleaning, packing, and wastage tracking.
- Purchasing: The software can assist with streamlining purchase orders and procurement processes.
- Inventory: Track and manage inventory and stock levels to optimize costs and reduce wastage.
- Sales and accounts: Track, manage, and process all sales, transactions, and financial reporting.
- Traceability: Ensure a product can be traced from the mother/plant–level to the table.
- Biotech: manage the tissue-culture plant production to reduce disease and improve traceability.
- And more!
Cost: Unavailable online. Get in touch to learn more.
AgCinect: Farm Management
Best for: Multi-entity farms and livestock farming
AgCinect was developed by a group of farmers and ranchers who all experienced similar issues with farm management. The software provides a comprehensive solution that manages farm operations and specializes in tracking.
This software can manage farms or groups of farms with multiple owners and processes can be automated to save time.
Here’s what it can do:
- Calving calendar: Keep breeding records and document each individual animal for quick reference.
- Feedlot management: Track and optimize feed inputs and scheduling.
- Livestock management: Automatic herd management and feed cost records, and maintain accurate sire and breed data.
- Field tracking: Understand historical data for each field to help with crop rotation, seed variety, and more.
- Equipment monitoring: Keep track of vehicle repairs, maintenance, overheads, and allocation.
- Inventory management: Track and manage all inventory and reduce operational costs.
- Purchasing, sales, and accounting: Get detailed transaction records, manage invoices, track expenses, receipts, checks, and more. Generate financial reports including balance sheets and income statements.
- And more.
Cost: Available by quotation. Get in touch to get yours.
Agworld: Farm Management
Best for: Row crops and permanent crop farming and anyone providing services to crop growers.
Agworld is independent and privately owned and specializes in data-based farm management software for crop growers. It allows you to collect, store, and analyze data at every level of your farm’s operation and share it with investors, growers, partners, and anyone else who needs to view it.
Additionally, use the data to plan your farm’s activities and schedules and run your farm with more optimization and precision.
Here’s what it can do:
- Data capture: Record everything from seeding rates to machinery setup and field information. Capture photos and annotate maps, and use the info to pinpoint and solve issues.
- Planning: Use the crop and activity templates to analyze crop performance and generate reports.
- Scheduling: Task assignment and management tools, use labels and safety data sheets, and save time with the tank mix calculator, measurements, and directions for new employees.
- Precision: Generate a seamless workflow that gets the right data in front of the right people instantly.
- Insights: Gain a full picture of your farm’s performance and use the data to analyze where improvements can be made.
Cost: Three pricing plans are available ranging from $1,995/year – $4,495/year and bespoke pricing is available for enterprise-level farms. A range of add-ons are also available.
TractionAg: Accounting and Finance
Best for: Larger farms that need advanced accounting mechanisms.
Traction is a full accounting suite directed specifically at farmers and their unique financial needs. By prioritizing cost tracking and analysis, you can understand precisely your operational costs and how to optimize and reduce them.
Here’s what it can do:
- Basic accounting: Including field profit by acre, importing bank and credit card transactions, cash balance sheet, income statements, and more.
- Basic operations: Including field profit by bushel, supply database, product, crop, and bin inventories, and more
- Advanced accounting: Including prepay expenses, land agreement, sharecropping management, accounts receivable and payable, invoicing, and more.
- Advanced operations: Including multiple crop zones, tank mixes, field work orders, and more.
- Payroll: Automatic employee tax calculations, filing, and payments.
- Agronomy: Field nutrition management, zoning, and target point management.
- Traction field: App-based soil sampling and record management.
Cost: There are four plans available ranging from $950/year – $4,750/year plus a number of optional add-on services.
Ambrook: Accounting and Finance
Best for: Smaller farms with basic accounting and bookkeeping requirements.
Ambrook is another type of financial management software aimed specifically at agricultural businesses. The platform focuses on covering and simplifying all your basic accounting and bookkeeping requirements so you can better track and keep on top of your farm’s finances.
Here’s what it can do:
- Bookkeeping: Schedule-F ready, this tool tracks and syncs transactions in real-time and codes enterprises and entities using a simple chart of accounts.
- Invoicing: Create and send invoices, scan bills, and use line item categorization for easy viewing.
- Cards: Automated expense reporting and digitalized receipt cards for each team member.
- Analytics: Simple dashboard overview of finances. Create and auto-calculate P&Ls, budgets, and working capital roundups.
- Funding: Work with Ambrook advisors to understand how to apply and qualify for grants, loans, and other financial assistance.
Cost: Unavailable online, get in touch for a demo and a quote.
Agri-Trak: Labor Tracking and Management
Best for: Small or independent farms that employ workers.
Agri-Trak was founded by Jamie Sonneville – a fifth-generation fruit farmer who also happened to have over 15 years of experience in IT. The software takes care of all your farm’s labor management needs and creates a single organized space in which you can optimize your farm’s operations.
Here’s what it can do:
- H2-A Compliance: Manage all your domestic and foreign labor contracts, wages, overtime, and piece rate calculations. More importantly, this ensures you remain compliant with labor regulations and won’t be subjected to an audit.
- Farm Management: Manage your farm’s locations, blocks, rows, produce types, and more from a single dashboard. Get a birds-eye view of your farming operations and use the data to optimize and reduce costs.
- Time and Piece Tracking: The software can accurately track your employee’s clock-in and clock-out times, calculate piece rates, and generate payroll reports.
Cost: Three plans are available ranging from $2,000/year – $3,000/year. Get in touch with Agri-Trak for a demo.
PickApp: Labor Tracking and Management
Best for: Larger labor-intensive farms and businesses with high volumes of employees.
PickApp is a software solution for managing labor-intensive farming practices. The software measures farming activities and uses datasets such as picking volumes, worker outputs and attendance, and product quality to allow you to improve and reach peak performance.
Here’s what it can do:
- Scan-to-report: Report all farm activities and link to location and worker. This replaces manual data entry and reduces errors.
- Dashboard analytics: Customized dashboards to analyze visual farm data, including attendance, picking and performance rates, daily activity, and more. Generate customized reports whenever required.
- Quality control: comprehensive scanning allows for optimized produce quality checks allowing increased productivity without reducing quality.
- Attendance tracking: Real-time worker attendance tracking and report generation. This allows you to measure performance and compensate and incentivize accordingly.
- Real-time notifications: Receive instant alerts on data abnormalities allowing you to fix the issues instantly.
Cost: $500/year for full use of the software.
Trace AgTech: Traceability
Best for: Contract farmers, processors, and exporters.
Traceability is an essential part of getting your produce from farm to table. Consumers want and need to know where their food has come from and what it may have been exposed to. This results in a healthier and safer product for people to buy.
Trace is a software that enables farmers to undertake responsible and sustainable farming. The data you place into the software also provides a full traceability map for consumers which increases the trust and quality assurance for your end product.
Here’s what it can do:
- Agronomy: Yield prediction, pest detection, advanced weather prediction, and climate forecasting. Nitrogen monitoring, farmer’s diary automation, prompts, alerts, and more.
- Business: Yield forecasting, crop insights and reports, chemical usage tracking, food quality control and testing, plot-based monitoring, traceability, tamper-proof coding, pass ratio improvement, and more.
- Analytics: Farm productivity and performance, understanding cropping cycles, pesticide usage, improved sustainability practices, automated mutual blending, and more.
Cost: Available by quote. Get in touch for a demo and price discussion.
Sencrop: Weather Tracking
Best for: Outdoor crop and produce farmers.
Predicting the weather is essential for healthy crop yields and managing outbreaks of pests and diseases. Sencrop takes things a step further and provides reliable, accurate, ultra-local data to farmers on an app.
This allows you to streamline your tasks according to the weather and manage chemical applications such as pesticides and herbicides more effectively.
Here’s what it can do:
- Realtime weather records: Super localized and pin-accurate weather data whenever you need it.
- Historical weather data: For comparison and averaging.
- Forecast models: To better predict upcoming weather patterns.
- Specialized weather stations: Stations for wind, rain, leaf, and solar – choose the best type for your crops.
Cost: Three plans are available – Standard, Pro, and Custom – all are available by quote. Contact Sencrop for a price.
Herdwatch: Livestock Management
Best for: Cattle, dairy, sheep, and goat farmers.
Herdwatch was developed in the UK and has grown to become the number one herd management software globally.
The app allows you to manage, update, and store all the data for each individual animal, keep on top of feed and medical schedules, and more. Best of all, it can be used offline so you don’t need a wifi connection to get access to your data.
There are plans available for cattle and dairy farming, sheep and goats, and grass and crops. Most plans have overlapping features but also have tools dedicated to your specific farming practice.
Here’s what it can do (features depend on your chosen plan):
- Cow/calf management plans: Manage your herd data and herd performance and health. Track breeding performance, feed and medicine records, generate reports, and more.
- Feedlot plans: Individual or group herd management, weather tracking, feed and medicine records. Track livestock sales and purchases, gain automated profit insights, farm/ranch mapping, and more.
- Dairy plans: Herd management, performance, and health tracking. Milk performance and birth tracking, breeding management, and livestock sales and purchases management.
- Sheep and goats plan: Flock production and management, ewe/nanny performance and health, lambing lists, and stats. Feed and medicine records, birth and movement records, and more.
- Grass and crops plan: Field mapping and soil health data, field-level NPK usage, fertilizer and spray management, seed and crop health tracking, and more.
Cost: From $16.58/month – $66.50/month depending on the chosen plan and type of farming.
Final Thoughts
Throughout the years, farming has become increasingly complicated and farmers are now required to wear many hats – not just their agricultural one. But the truth is that most farmers are not data analysts, financial experts, or performance forecasters.
We think it’s fantastic that there are now solutions that enable farmers to perform these necessary tasks affordably and effectively. These software platforms are a perfect example of how technology can assist agriculture beneficially.
At 8760 Solar, we embrace technology too and it is now easier and faster than ever to analyze our customer’s farms to uncover the best type and size of solar installation for their operations.
If you like the sound of vastly reducing your monthly energy bills and becoming more sustainable then we would love to hear from you. 8760 Solar specializes in providing high-performing solar solutions to agricultural businesses and our team is more than happy to answer any questions you may have on the subject.
To get started text “READY” to 719 470-0254 or contact us via email: sales@8760solar.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Software Does Agriculture Use?
Farms and agricultural businesses typically use farm management software to help run their operations. This software generally includes labor management and tracking, inventory and produce management, sales and accounting, planning, profiling, traceability, and more.
What Is a Farm Management Software?
Farm management software is purchased on a subscription basis and helps farmers run their businesses. By taking care of things like payroll, accounting, inventory, livestock data, farm data, and more, farmers can free up more time to concentrate on farming and also receive more accurate data to optimize their operations.
What New Technologies Do Farmers Use?
Farmers are increasingly using GPS and field and weather mapping technologies to optimize and improve crop production. Additionally, AI-powered algorithms can create optimized feeding, watering, and planting schedules which reduces overall costs.
Farm management software automates mundane and repetitive tasks for farmers, helps lower costs, and reduces the occurrence of errors.
What is Accounting Software for Farmers?
Accounting software for farmers is specialized in the farming industry. In addition to standard accounting practices, the software will also take farming operations into account and produce cost breakdowns. This provides an accurate overview of a farm’s financial health and helps identify where cost improvements can be made.