Russell Davison*, general manager of Farmable for English markets, travelled to Mareeba, Qld in February 2022, where he had the opportunity to meet Andrew Crebert and Rory Nunes. Mr Crebert and Mr Nunes manage three of Manbulloo's mango and avocado farms in Far North Queensland.

Manbulloo is the largest producer of Kensington Pride mangoes in Australia, supplying mangoes to both the domestic Australian and export markets. The farm’s managers initially contacted Farmable in their search for a practical, user-friendly, integrated system for farm management tasks and records that could operate consistently across all their farms.

As a result, Manbulloo has now changed from manual to digital recording.

Mr Davison said one of Farmable's first missions has always been to streamline the process, automate the records, and improve the captured data for recording treatments.

Farmable allows you to log a task and walks you through the process,
including products, rates and safety instructions, plus a map of the field being sprayed.  

Mr Crebert said farmers in Australia sometimes spray in the cooler hours of the day and night to avoid the hot summer temperatures. However, when the task of spraying is completed, the paperwork still needs to be completed. The farm managers and/or operators then spend time reviewing field notes and logging the jobs into the spray diary.

“Now I don't have to come back after spraying, go through what we applied in each block and complete the Spray diary. Farmable was a game-changer."

The game changer was how the Farmable mobile app helped Manbullo to record their farming activities as they happened, become more efficient, and have an easier overview of records over the year.

A case for automatic spray documentation

To better understand how automatic documentation can help farming operations on a daily basis, Mr Davison used the common job of spraying as an example.

“In the past you might have received a job recommendation via email, had a phone call with an advisor to discuss what needs to be applied and where, completed the spray job, and then filled out the spray diary in the field, or headed back to the shed or office. A pretty long process, right?

“With Farmable, you or your advisor can record an observation directly in the app. You can plan treatment and delegate the job to yourself or another crew member. You can track a job when someone starts it. In addition to having details per field block, it also registers the information needed for best practice farm management.”

Benefits of automated documentation

"I save time and hassle every time we do a spray", Mr Crebert said. “We are talking about a large amount of time weekly, but even more if we think per month or year.”

Mr Crebert records all spray and fertigation treatments with the free Farmable Mobile App and Manbulloo also subscribes to the Add-on Reporting Module, which costs just $79 per year per farm.

With the Reporting module, Manbulloo exports data logs in their preferred format. Using the ‘Jobs’ feature in Farmable, they can document all the information required for management reporting and reviews and comply with both legislation and customer requirements in areas such as food safety, quality, and Workplace Health and Safety.

Save time documenting

Besides the time saved by having all this data automatically recorded in Farmable, Mr Davison said the system also works to eliminate the chances of a mistake. “When a job is given to a crew member, like a driver, he has all mixing rates for chemicals and the recommended equipment and sprayer already listed.

“The driver or the farm manager can quickly view in real-time all the jobs in progress to ensure everything is going as planned. You can skip the filing cabinet and access all your historical treatments in the Farmable Web Portal.”

A freemium version of the Farmable App and add-on modules are available on the Farmable website.

*Russell Davison is general manager, Australia and New Zealand and interacts with growers to analyse how they use technology today and their needs for better software in the future. As an Australian living in Norway, he finds it invigorating to connect with growers worldwide and back home to help find solutions to modernise the agriculture industry.