Features

The Farm Resource Management decision support system is a Microsoft Windows based application for assisting large farm owners and managers, or loan institutions to determine projected farm operation profitability.

The application architecture consists of,

• the main user interface for defining the farm parameters and viewing the results
• an Access97 or other ODBC-compliant database for storing information (RDBMS, such as SQL Server or Oracle, not included)
• predefined tractor, tire, implement, crop and weather data.

The application accepts user information on tractors, tires, implements, crop, weather patterns and economic factors, in addition to the preloaded data.

The information is applied to appropriate engineering models for determining,

• the required resources for timely completion of operations (lease vs. buy),
• the timeliness penalties for given farm resources, as well as the risk for losing the crop
• proposed scenarios to determine optimal farm operations and configurations for maximum economic return.

Obviously the regional climate and the weather variations are a major factor in determining a farming outcome. In that respect, the model output is only an estimate, and could be used as a measure of required insurance. To that end the models include risk factors for weather variances, expressed as probabilities.

The application includes on-line documentation.

Key Benefits

• Allows a farm manager or a lender to play what-if scenarios to determine best farm resource management strategies, or evalute risks.
• Allows a farm manager to have better understanding of the available options to maximize profitability.
• Allows a farm manager to anticipate adversity, whether in the form of weather or commodity prices, and determine insurance requirements.
• Allows model customization to the local weather and economic factors.

Pricing