Straight to work with Crop-R CULTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY The Crop-R program is currently at the stage where every farmer can keep a basic cultivation registration. But we haven’t finished yet, Ivor Bosloper tells us. Also an App for registration on smart phone It is now also possible to input current cultivation registration data on your smart phone when you are in the field or in the storehouse, for example. A practical app has been developed for this. The app again shows the map of the entire farm with all the plots and data that have already been entered into the Crop-R online program. You can then add on-the-spot data to the program on your smart phone as with chemicals registration, or the Growerapp of Appsforfarming. The Crop-R app is more a visual application, because the plots for which you want to fill out data have been drawn in. According to Bosloper, this can be further developed, for example, by linking GPS location determination to the plot. Say that you’re spraying against Phytophthora in a field, the data of what the grower is doing in that field will immediately be entered into the data folder of that particular plot. And there are many more clever things to add. For example, Bosloper had a request from a grower to have photographs that were made in the field immediately placed with that particular field. This would help work out the information when back at home. Suppose you see a diseased plant, but don’t immediately know what type of disease it is, you can then look it up when at home. Another possibility is that a farm hand records a diseased plant the moment he sees one, so the grower take action. Linkage with the entire chain Another important idea behind the online program, which will ultimately be Bosloper’s revenue model, is the linkage of the grower with all kinds of advisory bodies, information services, suppliers, buyers, in short the entire chain. If a potato merchant or accountant wants to use the program for data exchange, they themselves will have to pay for the service. And there is a great deal of interest already. The initial customers of Crop-R are the Skylark Foundation, Dacom, ANOG, Blgg AgroExpertus and Countus. We’re having talks with other companies for cooperation. ‘For example, there’s an agreement with Blgg that they can have an exchange with Crop-R for their soil analyses. We’ve really only just started the commercial step, because we decided that it was important to have the online program up and running first. When growers are enthusiastic and have no problem working with it, the remainder of the agro chain will follow’, Bosloper thinks. For example, think of the inspection and certification services such as the NAK and NAK AGRO. ● Leo Hanse Potato World 2013 • number 2 33 Pagina 32
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