HEART/NSTA Trust students develop farm management application

A group of students at the HEART/NSTA Trust’s Stony Hill campus, pursuing courses in Web and mobile application development is now working on software that will enable farmers to record and safeguard farm-related information, as well as efficiently monitor the needs of their plants and animals.

Giovanni Stone, a mobile application development student who spoke with The Gleaner at the 70th staging of the Denbigh Agricultural, Industrial and Food Show in Clarendon shared that the Agri-Smart platform being developed will be accessible online and in the form of a mobile app.

With the damages experienced by the passage of Hurricane Beryl on July 3, Stone noted that small and medium-sized farmers especially were having difficulty recovering from their losses.

The farm management app, he said, was developed with the recognition that many farmers still use paper-based methods to record information about their farms and daily operations.

He said some farmers had to start over the process of keeping up to date with how to run their business as the notebooks, which were used to record information, were damaged.

“We designed this app so they have a safe place to store it (information) and it’s easily accessible and the data will calibrate itself. For example, [under] the finances [tab] ... it produces a graph for you so it shows you your incomes, your expenses, it shows how many profit you made ... and you can also select the date [to determine] how the money made in August or in July or June,” he explained.

So far, the application has a weather feature that provides a seven-day forecast, as well as a real-time representation of the local weather of the area where the farmer is located.

It also has a section that lists the number, breed, and classification of animals a farmer owns on his property, as well as a user profile and resources tab.

Additionally, educational resources have been integrated into the platform so that farmers can learn about the most prevalent illnesses that affect plants and cattle in Jamaica.

“When you populate the app, it gives an easier sense of accessibility and you can see the information in a [clearer] way instead of actually have to going through your books,” Stone said.

All data that are used to populate the app will be saved in the Cloud, “so even if your device is smashed, as long as you remember your email you’ll have access to all of your information,” he added.

He told The Gleaner that considerations are already being made to add alert features should emergencies arise.

“We want to add a thing where you can connect to RADA (Rural Agricultural Development Authority) to, for example, send out signals of distress, [and] send messages straight to RADA,” he said.

Stone continued that the team has already developed an artificial intelligence chatbot into the software so that farmers may ask questions about farming issues they might encounter.

“We want to also implement a chat forum that connects other farmers with each other,” he added.

The platform’s main goal is to teach farmers how to use technology to operate their businesses more effectively and to never lose track of their information. Users will also be able to access their information on-the-go with this app and can peruse the data whenever necessary.