Farming with your fingertips: Ditch the pens and notebooks

TROY, Mo. — Farmers: it’s time to put away the pocket protector. Your phone can do the work of dozens of seed corn pens and notebooks, says University of Missouri Extension agricultural engineering specialist Charles Ellis.

By pointing your smartphone camera at a QR code, you can instantly link to webpages.

Liken it to a bar code at the grocery store or the local farm store, says Ellis. It is just another standardized way for the user to get stored information. This information may include maintenance records of equipment, herbicide labels and operator manuals.

You can scan documents such as scale tickets, sales receipts, etc., using your phone camera and create PDF files that are stored in folders. Unique QR codes created with an app on your phone can be placed in each piece of equipment for access.

MU Commercial Agriculture’s Horizon Point, at http://agebb.missouri.edu/horizonpoint, is a free service that sends a daily, customized report by email. It gives information for planting depth and soil temperature, animal comfort indices, rainfall runoff estimator and scouting aids for weeds and insects, among other things.

Horizon Point gives forecasts and historical data for precipitation, temperature and wind.

U2U Decision Support Tool for Corn Growing Days, at https://mygeohub.org/groups/u2u/purdue_gdd, is a modeling tool for silking, black layer and frost risk. The tool gives information based upon 30 years of history and allows inputs specific to ZIP code, city and county. This tool is beneficial in years of replant or delayed planting to predict probability of corn reaching maturity before frost, Ellis says.

Midwest Cover Crop Council Decision Tool helps growers choose what cover crops work in specific areas. This tool uses climatic data down to the county level and, with producer input, provides a listing of suitable cover crops based upon that information. Find this tool at https://www.midwestcovercrops.org.

Crop Water Use Application, at http://ag3.agebb.missouri.edu/horizonpoint/cropwater, helps growers decide whether additional water is needed based upon the crop stage, field qualities, soil and crop type and weather.

MU Extension’s ID Weeds app allows the user to take a photo of a weed and get an identification and information about the weed’s characteristics. Find this at https://extension.missouri.edu/node/60900 (Android) or https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id-weeds/id559906313 (iPhone/iPad).

N Price App by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Integrated Pest and Crop Management program provides help in calculating the dollar amount per pound of nitrogen. This free app allows the user to compare the price of various forms of nitrogen fertilizer products by pound. Visit https://ipcm.wisc.edu/apps/n-price-app.

There also are apps for disease detection, sprayer tips, fertility removal, conversion of measurements, loans at varying interest rates and amounts and more. Basically, there’s an app for most questions you need answered in agriculture, says Ellis.