Agriculture Field Teams and Farm Visit Tracking
Agronomists, extension workers and agri-input field staff cover large rural areas with poor signal. This covers planning farm visits, recording the advice given and proving the visits happened.
A lot of agricultural work is done by field staff: agronomists from seed and fertiliser companies, extension workers on government and NGO programmes, field officers at contract farming companies, and dealers' sales staff. They cover large rural areas, often on poor roads with no signal, and most of what they do for a farmer happens during the farm visit.
Why farm visits are hard to manage
- Farms are far apart, and one visit can take half a day.
- Many farming areas have weak signal or none.
- Visits are hard to verify. On paper, a phone call from the road can look the same as a visit.
- The advice given is rarely written down, so each visit starts from scratch.
Plan by area and season
Group farms by village or area and plan visits around the crop calendar: pre-sowing, sowing, growth stages and harvest. Farmers in a contract or programme can have visits scheduled at regular intervals, which then appear on the field officer's phone automatically.
Record each visit
A farm visit record should capture:
- the farm and the farmer;
- when the visit started, and where the officer was compared with the farm;
- a checklist for the visit type: crop stage, pest and disease scouting, irrigation, input use, advice given;
- photos of the crop, pests, disease symptoms or demonstration plots;
- notes on the advice given and any follow-ups agreed;
- the farmer's acknowledgement where needed.
All of this has to work offline, keep the real time and location, and sync once the officer is back in range.
Farm locations
Many farms have no street address. Record each farm's location on the first visit so later visits can be checked against it and new staff can find the place.
Managing field officers
- Attendance with location, wherever they start the day.
- Visits per officer against the plan, week by week.
- Visits that started far from the farm.
- Fuel and travel expenses, with receipts and approval.
What belongs elsewhere
Detailed farmer registration and profiles, crop and yield data, input credit, procurement and payments to farmers usually need systems built for agriculture.
In Movtro
In Movtro each farm is a site, with the farmer as the customer, and each visit is a job with a checklist, photos, notes and the farmer's signature, all captured on the phone and without signal. When the officer starts the visit, Movtro records where they were and how far that was from the farm's location, and flags starts that were far away. Recurring jobs schedule regular visits. Field officers clock in with location and submit fuel and travel expenses for approval. Reports show visits and hours per officer.
Movtro does not hold crop or yield data, full farmer surveys, input credit or procurement.
Related reading: field visit tracking, NGO field staff management and offline mode. Or start free.