Browse by Topic: Planning

Veggie Compass is a decision support tool to help diversified vegetable farmers understand their costs of production and evaluate profitability by crop and by market channel. Veggie Compass enables farmers to make strategic decisions to adjust prices, reduce costs, shift market channel focus, reduce or drop unprofitable products, and expand production of their most profitable ventures based on their own farm data. Gathering and entering the data needed to accurately calculate the costs of production on a diversified vegetable farm that might be growing over 40 crops and selling in multiple markets is challenging. This is why so many growers rely on gut instincts and/or simplified crop budgets rather than a complete accounting. Veggie Compass is designed to help growers sort through the chaos and enable them to make data-driven decisions to enhance profitability. Growers using Veggie Compass report learning which crops on their farm are true “winners” and “losers” in terms of profitability; identifying which market channels are more profitable than others; identifying where cost savings might be made or whether yields could be enhance through better management; using the information from Veggie Compass to negotiate higher prices with wholesale buyers or to target specific crops for wholesale markets.

The CSF Water Deficit Calculator estimates soil water content within a crop’s effective root zone to inform decision makers about current and forecasted water deficits. Information is used to determine the optimum frequency and duration of irrigation

Web Soil Survey (WSS) provides soil data and information produced by the National Cooperative Soil Survey. It is operated by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and provides access to the largest natural resource information system in the world. NRCS has soil maps and data available online for more than 95 percent of the nation’s counties and anticipates having 100 percent in the near future. The site is updated and maintained online as the single authoritative source of soil survey information. Soil surveys can be used for general farm, local, and wider area planning.

Historical weather data, including wind direction and intensity.