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Anyone who has ever played one of the simulated farming games on Facebook knows that it can be hard to keep up with when you need to check back in to reap your crops or water your plants. Imagine a several thousand acre real farm with a variety of different crops in different fields and you can imagine the logistical issues that could, ahem, crop up. FarmLogs helps keep up with all the details and makes them easy to find for daily, weekly and monthly planning purposes.

The New York Times reported on the new program FarmLogs created by Jesse Vollmar, 23, and Brad Koch, 22, both graduates of Saginaw State University. Vollmar grew up on a farm in Michigan and decided their IT consulting firm could come up with a better way for farmers to organize all of their statistics, inventory, and crop information.


While computers have been used in farming for years, this program allows farmers to more easily coordinate necessary tasks. The program keeps up with what crops are planted where and when something happened to that particular field or crop. For instance, you can check with FarmLogs to see when was the last time you sprayed a particular field or spread a particular type of fertilizer.

The program is all kept in the cloud so you can access and modify information from anywhere. When visiting various fields, you can use your laptop, tablet or smartphone to access the program and update data. When you get back to the office you don’t have to worry about transferring the information on various field activities into the computer because it is already there and ready to use.


In one view, a farmer can see rectangular representations of what is planted on each field. A click leads to a log of what was done when on each field: tilling on this date, fertilizing on that date, spraying on another.

With the data stored in one place, it can be combined with information from other sources and used by the farmers. If they need, they can also share it easily with consulting agronomists, crop insurance agents, the Agriculture Department and others.

You can also get the latest weather report, locate farm equipment and note where it needs to go next all within the same program. You don’t have to worry about creating spread sheets because the program keeps everything organized and easy to find. You can also generate a variety of reports so that you can keep up with year over year comparisons.

Color coded schedules can be kept to keep up with what has been done and to plan what needs doing. If your farm staggers different crops for different times of the year, this calendar feature will allow you to keep up with what crops need what attention, which fields to lay fallow, where the next seasons crops need to be planted and when to plant and harvest each crop. FarmLogs might not revolutionize farming, but it certainly improves on the record keeping and organization. I wonder if there is a fantasy version for use on Farmville.

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