Farmers’ commitment and ability to keep good records varies tremendously. Records and notes are often cryptic, misplaced, or damaged and for many, remain unused. If such information were recorded digitally and stored in the cloud, we immediately solve some access and consistency issues and make this data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). More importantly, interoperable digital formats can also enable mining for insights and analysis in simplistic (sorting or filtering) or complex (multifactor analysis on yields, harvest date projections, etc.) manners.
In this work we offer well-structured private database templates as open source resources for agriculturalists who may have modest spreadsheet skills. This approach yields more consistent data with simple entry. These are also packaged with a “Simple Personal Databases” workshop that teaches how to start from scratch to build an activity or event log. Applications include records of field activities, horticultural crop operations, machinery maintenance and repair, livestock treatments, grain marketing and delivery, food safety modernization act records, and more. These farmer-centric Airtable databases use simple data validated forms that are mobile friendly to yield operational data that is tidy, human readable, readily edited, and exportable for analysis in other software. The leveraging of data validation with capacity for complete file uploads, photos, or screen captures helps to keep more complete records in tidy format.
These private databases can fill a gap left by farm management information systems and original equipment manufacturer platforms by easing the collection of data humans know but is often not recorded. Such data can facilitate logistics, provide important contextual metadata for other data layers, and improve enterprise financial analysis. Data mining, artificial intelligence, and machine learning require full context of production details (both in cropping and livestock systems) which could be readily collected at the time of operations via simple forms that populate carefully designed databases.
