One of the top reasons why most farmers are poor is because they do not treat their farm as a business. For any business to be successful, the owner is expected to have good record keeping and cost management practices. Most poor farmers fail to keep farm records. As a result of this, they cannot make informed decisions for future planting seasons.
To succeed as a farmer, it is advisable that farmers should allocate time to properly document their farm activities and expenses. To do this, a minimum of 10 minutes per day is recommended. In this post, I will share 6 benefits that farmers get when they keep farm records and the impact on their business.

1.. Track Cash Inflow and Outflow
Tracking cashflow and outflow enables the farmer to get detailed reports on expenses made and also revenues from sale of farm produce. At the start of the season, a farmer should create a budget with proposed expenditure and revenue for proper planning.
2. Evaluating Farm’s Viability
Farm records can be used to evaluate a farm project in order to determine its chances of success. This would help the farmer make decisions such as increasing or limiting investments to that farm project.
3. Access to Loan and Credit Facilities
Financial institutions require a good amount of paperworks before disbursing loan requests or insurance claims. Good farm records can help farmers with these. By presenting records from previous farming season along with overall farm plan, a farmer can meet the requirements and show that it is capable of refunding the loan.
4. Improved farm planning and forecasting
Imagine the possibility that you can forecast your revenue even before you start a farm project. This will give you peace of mind to commence the farm season with a guarantee of success.
A good farm record keeping system makes it easy to extrapolate future yields and expenses based on previous farming seasons and historical data. Also, a farmer can learn from past experiences to prevent repeating the same mistake. By keeping a journal/diary of farm works, this information can be made available to other co-workers.
5. Long term Projections
Farming is a business and businessmen make adequate steps to expand their enterprise, hence, a good record keeping would help a farmer make projections for his farm. Through this record a farmer can determine if he realizes enough to expand his farm in the nearest future, this would help him take steps to the realization of such goal. He may also choose to invest in livestock production or intercrop with legumes on the same farm.
6. Better Farm Management
A good record keeping system would have information relating to best farming practises to use. This can include seed germination rates, variety of crop planted, type of soil used for planting crop, time of the season for best yield, methods of irrigation to be used, best diseases and pest management techniques.


How to keep farm records without stress.

It is obvious that keeping adequate farm record is good for farmers. Most farmers understand that these activities are very essentials, yet, they fail at keeping farm records simply because it is a boring task. For example, farmers have to carry around notebooks and spreadsheets to take notes and keep records.
We launched probityfarms to help farmers keep farm records in a modern way.
The application helps farmers to keep record of farm activities, costs, and expenses and revenue for a entire planting season using cloud technology which ensures the farm record is secure and safe. Farmers can export a report of farms viability and report for access to loan and credit facilities. The application also allows farmers to upload pictures of farm activities and farm purchases for future referencing. You can learn more about how the application works and sign up for a free account on www.Probityfarms.com