Welcome to the 2017 Ag Mag

Our Business Development Manager, Paul Thomas, introduces this issue of the Ag Mag and explains why 2017 looks set to be another significant year for Greenlight Grower Management.

Paul ThomasBusiness Development ManagerMuddy Boots Software

There’s a huge amount to look forward to this year and this issue is dedicated to showcasing some of the really exciting features that will be coming to Greenlight Grower Management over the course of 2017. That said it should be noted that 2016 was a very significant year for us too! Not only was it Muddy Boots’ 20th anniversary, making us the longest established company of our kind in this industry, it was also a year when Greenlight Grower Management went from strength to strength and truly started to gain momentum in the market. Last year saw record uptake of our product, especially amongst growers; and as we continue to make our unique product a truly all-encompassing farm management platform in 2017 - with the addition of precision capability (page 05 & 06) and product ordering (page 11) to mention just two - we’re confident this percolation throughout the agronomist and grower base is set to continue.

One hot topic at the moment that is naturally very close to our hearts is the value of any farm data that is being gathered by companies. We believe it is imperative that farmers see a return on the investment of their time and effort in following sustainability initiatives for brand holders and large retailers.

Within the Muddy Boots global platform and across all of our products – it is always the owner of the system who owns their data. It is really important to us in Greenlight Grower Management that, as it’s the farmer who owns the data, he should be the one who is able to capture the value from it. This means that if the farmer’s data is desired by anybody, it is the farmer who authorises any access.

Not only that, but in some cases, our systems are structured so that a farmer granting access to his data could be rewarded perhaps with a better price from his customers, a preferred supplier contract, or perhaps some feedback or benchmarking in relation to international

grower standards; all of which would enable the grower to improve his net return the following season.

We see this as a key breakthrough in terms of allowing a farmer to harvest value from his data in an indirect way, and at Muddy Boots, we’re working really hard with the brand holders and retailers to deliver this kind of value back to the farming community.

So put in the simplest terms, any users of our products have to opt in to share their data, on a case by case basis, not opt out of their data being shared on their behalf.

Enjoy the magazine, and hopefully see you soon!

In this Issue:

Let’s connect!

New mobile fertiliser plans keep growers in control

Precision farming capability now on GLGM

Leading the market with Cargill

A stitch in time...

2017 roadmap

Introducing product ordering

Improving your experience

Greenlight Grower Management in practice - Agrovista

Greenlight Grower Management in practice - Frontier

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@AHDB One fifth of milk is still bought from the local convenience store #AHDBinsights

@cropprotection Did you know? 47% of EU territory is farmland and is managed by more than 12 million full-time farmers

@Bayer4CropsUK #DYK: 1 in 5 primary school children in the UK have never visited a farm. More facts at @YouthAgSummit #ageducation

@Bayer4CropsUK At @OpenFarmSunday ‘16 we had the pleasure of chatting to nearly 9,000 people about sustainable agriculture

@FarmingUK World celebrates British farmers efforts to combat climate change at UN’s #COP22: #BackBritishFarming

@FarmersWeekly The 2017 oilseed rape area is predicted at 557,000ha, 4% lower than Defra’s estimate of the 2016 area #clubhectre

@UNDP #DidYouKnow agriculture employs over 40% of our world’s population?

Word on the tweet

Can you explain your job?I am a Technical Support Advisor for our farm services, I help resolve the more technical problems for CropWalker, Greenlight Grower Management and Procheck. If there is a case that is more complex and requires further investigation, then first line support will raise it to me to resolve.

What do you enjoy most about your job?Engaging with our customers and resolving their problems. It’s always nice to receive a compliment after spending time fixing something, I enjoy solving technical problems and seeing a result. Muddy Boots is also a very friendly and efficient place to work and there is certainly never a dull day!

What are you most excited about in Greenlight Grower Management?Working together to provide the agricultural industry a global, leading platform to help capture and analyse data. Greenlight Grower Management will help agronomists and farmers alike make the right decisions to maximise profit, trust and visibility.

When you’re not at work, what do you enjoy doing?I enjoy going to the gym, building PCs and visiting new places.

Meet a team member

Jake DaviesTechnical Support Advisor

Connect with us @MuddyBootsLtd

WRAP – 89% of food gets wasted in the UK before it reaches supermarket shelves.

Mintel survey – 56% of shoppers say they try to buy British food whenever they can.

Bayer – 221 million hectares of wheat are grown each year worldwide. This equals the area of Greenland.

DEFRA – 71% of land in the UK is used for farming (17.2 million ha).

89% 56% 221m 71%

Fertiliser plans in Greenlight Grower Management let farmers and agronomists optimise their cropping strategy. In addition to existing geo-located inspections, activity recording, AgChem planning and pesticide audit functionality, the new fertiliser application allows farmers to create, confirm and apply a fertiliser plan right there in the field. And because Greenlight Grower Management is cloud-based, it’s available on a desktop, iPad, iPhone or mobile device, thus allowing farmers to get a comprehensive view of their cropping records and activity, regardless of whether they are in the office or the field.

Fertiliser programmes have long been a feature of Greenlight Grower Management, but they’re traditionally used as a seasonal planning tool. With recent enhancements and new features, users now have a fertiliser plan that includes activity and application management tools integrating fertiliser applications with field cropping history. This fertiliser toolset is intuitive in terms of usability, mobility and design.

Growers and agronomists can create a draft fertiliser plan and share it with contractors or farm workers to apply. The user can then complete and confirm the plan application, as well as the ability to make changes as required in the field. They’re also able to share this information back to the agronomist and grower in real time.

In other words, once you’ve carried out a fertiliser application, you can update your field in the app to reflect this, all with the click of a button or a tap of a screen. The fertiliser plan also ties in with any soil test results and crop yield, maximising nutrient requirements recorded for that field.

Another unique feature is the off-line function of Greenlight Grower Management which ensures that new data inputs and changes are saved and then become immediately visible to all users and contractors when synced. This allows the user to work in the field regardless of whether a farm has 3G connectivity or not. With conventional systems, it may take an agronomist or grower up to a week to transmit a file update. This information delay, particularly

in high disease or stress situations, could potentially result in yield reduction and income loss. Greenlight Grower Management solves this problem.

The new features of Greenlight Grower Management along with the existing product functionality provide farmers with immediate insight on activity across their farm allowing them to make fully informed decisions or take immediate action should critical crop issues arise. The result is clear insight into what, if anything, is still required at any point in time.

While being innovative, we’re also realistic in our developments. As much as we’d like to imagine every member of the farm sporting the latest iPhone or iPad, we know this isn’t always the case. By incorporating the ability for growers to print off fertiliser plans for contractors or farm staff to use, we have overcome this hurdle. This may seem minor or contrary to our belief in digital cloud technology, but it’s a feature people have often asked for and is just another example of our commitment to including end-users in the development of Greenlight Grower Management.

New mobile fertiliser plans keep growers in control

Precision farming...

...coming soon to Greenlight Grower Management

Planning with precision

The integration of MapIT Pro in Greenlight Grower Management will give farmers the ability to import shapefiles of their farm from machinery, official sources, SOYL, SoilQuest and Government data files including official field areas and boundaries.

This integration will allow a vast array of precision data to be overlaid on top of a map, providing a very detailed picture of the field and crop’s performance. This includes fertiliser rates, seed rates, soil zones, harvest and yield data by zone. With data available in real time, farmers can make informed and immediate changes to optimise the crop in any season.

Through using this new feature, a farmer will take his precision farming to an entirely new level. Powered by Greenlight Grower Management’s map data files and using the machine’s GPS capability, the application or spray rates of fertiliser/seed/ag-chem can automatically adjust as the operator or farmer moves across the field. This is an incredibly exciting development for Muddy Boots and we’re thrilled to be able to offer our users such an enhancement to their arable business.

Layering data for a clearer picture

Using precision soil sampling to create soil zones, and taking boundaries, trees, low lying/damp areas and ditches into consideration, the farmer will be able to create a map with areas of higher and lower production potential.

Not only is this a much more efficient way to work, cutting costs and reducing wastage, but it also acts as a powerful planning tool, which can be used in the preparation of the following year’s activity in that field.

Forecasting

The benefits of using Greenlight Grower Management’s precision farming capability are equal for both farmer and agronomist, but the future ability to use satellite, drone and radar data to forecast disease will make the agronomist’s job that much easier. Having such a detailed picture of a field’s crop status, based on soil testing, NDVI imagery, and yield data will help an agronomist to analyse crop health, identify the prevalence of a disease across a wide area, predict the likelihood of infection and even recommend preventative action from a remote location.

With this platform in place, there’s no end to the data that can be overlaid onto your maps and as such the insight you can gain from Greenlight Grower Management is significantly enhanced.

New acquisition of MapIT Pro adds precision farming capability to Greenlight Grower Management

Greenlight Grower Management is fast becoming the crop recording software of choice for managing the entire farm business, regardless of whether you are in the office or the middle of a field. With the acquisition of the precision mapping tool, MapIT Pro (previously available from Agrovista), Greenlight Grower Management’s functionality has taken a huge step forward.

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Having identified a requirement to implement a new crop recording tool that could connect their team of agronomists and scouts across the country, Cargill Canada selected Greenlight Grower Management.

“Greenlight Grower Management has been leaps and bounds ahead of anything we’ve had historically and we’ve worked with a number of different software platforms,” says Janel. “It was a really pleasant change moving onto this software; it has a lot of the functionality that we need and look for and it’s really easy to use and access. In general it’s been far superior to anything we’ve used before. In the past our software systems allowed us to work offline then synchronise, however they were cumbersome, and difficult to make recommendations from. They had limitations that got in the way of wide spread adoption.

“Inspections can take place in the field, and then recommendations and planning activities can be done back in the office, on the desktop. Then, when we enter the main season, when the agronomists spend much of their time in the fields, it’s really useful to have the mobile version as they get a lot of field scouting done directly on their mobile device.”

Speaking specifically about version 2 of the Greenlight Grower Management app, Janel describes just what a step forward it has been:

“We got on very well with the original Greenlight Grower Management app, but version 2 feels just that bit more intuitive, it is just so easy to use and one of the most exciting things is now having it on our iPhone.

“We all have our phones in our pockets, regardless of where we are, so we aren’t having to carry any additional pieces of tech around with us. Being able to walk the fields without having to carry a tablet or iPad, or even a notebook (which is where we were at one point in history) is a huge deal.”

The process of going from field observations to creating a recommendation is so nice, it’s so fluid, and it’s a huge step up from where we’ve been in the past. Being able to do this for multiple fields, while out and about is saving us a huge amount of time.

Janel concludes by saying that because Cargill agronomists are scouting customer’s fields, one of the great things they’re taking advantage of is the app’s use of the phones GPS:

“To be able to pinpoint specifically which field we’re in and which spot we’re inspecting and then to mark that inspection geographically is actually really neat, it gives some added peace of mind, which is really important when you consider that growers are trusting us with their most valuable commodities.”

Why Greenlight Grower Management is leading the marketCargill Agronomy Project Advisor, Janel Delage describes how the new Greenlight Grower Management app has helped significantly speed up the way their agronomists work, both in and out of the field.

Janel DelageAgronomy Project Advisor

A stitch in time...

1. Copy inspections

Greenlight Grower Management now has the ability to let agronomists copy crop inspections.

So if an agronomist is walking several fields of wheat in a particular day, they might come across a disease or a pest in one field which is actually common across a whole swathe of fields or farms. So once they’ve done their first inspection in the field, they can then open that inspection in a separate field that has the same problem, click copy and Greenlight Grower Management will then copy all of the text and comments over from the original inspection to the new field and multiple fields thereafter. This saves the agronomist an enormous amount of time in having to rewrite the same inspection for multiple fields or sites with the same problem.

What this feature won’t copy over are any photos and geolocations attributed to that original inspection. This allows the agronomist to add new images of the new field should they choose to.

2. Templates

Templates are a way for an agronomist to create a list of regularly used products for a specific disease or time of year. This would include the product, the rates, the water volume, the water quality etc. as well as all of his reasons, restrictions or warning comments. This can be saved as a template and then every time he visits that crop during that time of the season, if it’s appropriate, he can click ‘use template’ and Greenlight Grower Management will pre-populate all that data for him.

This saves a huge amount of time and the agronomist still has the ability to edit anything he may wish to, depending on the circumstances.

Historically, agronomists often had the tedious task of repeatedly entering information over and over again for multiple fields or farms with similar issues. Now, thanks to these two features amongst others, users of Greenlight Grower Management can eliminate the time-consuming repetition and work in a smarter more efficient way.

Greenlight Grower Management is designed to manage even the most expansive farm businesses. And while the activities may be numerous and complex, the management of them doesn’t need to be time consuming. Over the last 12 months a huge amount of work has gone into refining the product to make it as time efficient as possible. Here we pick out two of these key time saving features and explain how something that would have historically taken five or ten minutes, can now be done in seconds and just a few clicks.

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2017 roadmapWe’ve got a lot in the pipeline for Greenlight Grower Management this year. Here’s a hint at just some of the features we’ll be working on in 2017.

Precision mapping capability

Financials

The ability to view and manage precision

farming data within Greenlight Grower

Management.

Capture and manage farm business costs in Greenlight Grower

Management and view your financial data, past and present.

Product ordering

Effortlessly create orders from your

planned spray applications and

send these directly to you supplier or

depot, straight from Greenlight Grower

Management. Spray templates

Centrally create and manage your company

spraying templates within the product.

Nutrient planning

Enhance your nutrient planning with the help

of our UK nutrient calculator.

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Weather serviceView weather data in the software and

always stay one step ahead of the elements.

Seed PlanningGenerate seed

recommendations for operators with

the help of our seed planning module.

HarvestRecord your yields and

income simply and efficiently. Monitor

performance field by field.

Product ordering replaces an old integration that CropWalker had with the ag-chem companies’ internal ERP and stock systems. So once an agronomist has created a plan in Greenlight Grower Management and published it, they can go on the

order tab and create a product order based entirely on the specific details entered into that plan. From this point the agronomist can specify a delivery address for the order and choose a preferred time for the delivery.

One of the really clever aspects of this feature is the fact that quantities and pricing will be automatically pre-populated with the best pack size choice for that specific order, based on the price plan for that specific farmer. That said everything is completely amendable, so everything can be manually changed if need be. Products can also be added if the farmer requires a sundry order as well. The agronomist can then check the order, it will give a cost for the application and if he’s happy, he can confirm it. The order will then go directly to the supplying company’s system.

Once the supplier dispatches the order, Greenlight Grower Management will alert the agronomist that the order is on

its way, so they can feel fully in charge of that order and they’ll know when it’s on the farm.

Product ordering is just one of the many ways Greenlight Grower Management is helping agronomists streamline their work, save significant time and feel confident that all of their activity on farm is safely and securely held in one pocket sized system. Turn to page 8 to read more about how the new features of Greenlight Grower Management are making an agronomists life quicker and easier.

Introducing the new product ordering feature – a direct line to your supplier of choice

The product ordering feature is a brand new element in Greenlight Grower Management that integrates with the major ag-chem companies’ product stock systems. It allows agronomists to make ag-chem orders, directly from the software, based on a specific plan they will have created. Think of it as a direct line to the farmer’s supplier of choice. This, along with a delivery tracking system is all neatly wrapped together within Greenlight Grower Management’s product ordering feature. So, how does it work? Here Julian Knight, Product Owner for Greenlight Grower Management, explains the ins and outs of this exciting new feature.

Improving your experience

1. Hi Jordan! Do you want to introduce yourself and let us know a bit more about what

you do in your job role and, more specifically, with Greenlight Grower Management?

I’m Jordan! I’m a hybrid UX/UI designer/developer who has come from a software engineering background, starting off as a full stack developer. Here at Muddy Boots I’ve come into this role as a front end web developer. I serve as a resource for all of the teams within the organisation, our two man team work on the front end of each of the products. This gives us a great helicopter view across all products, which helps the second half of my job where I do a lot of work on the user experience, making sure the software is easy to use and accessible for all types of users.

Specifically in Greenlight Grower Management we work closely with the product to generate high quality visuals as well as usable functions for the app and website as per requested by the users.

2. What do you enjoy most about the work you do with Greenlight Grower Management?

I’ve not had huge exposure to the product so far but I’d say creating new features and being challenged to think of new ways to do things that are easy for the users to use and will be well received. This requires a lot of extensive research through the use of our website analytics to see what platforms our users are using as this helps us to shape their experience. Gathering feedback from UserVoice has also been helping to shape our roadmap to make the product as visually pleasing as we can.

3. Since starting in the business, what has been your impression of the user experience within Greenlight Grower Management?

My impression so far is that occasionally, our feature development can be based on broader assumptions of what our users want from Greenlight Grower Management. We’re now making sure that through using tools like UserVoice and our in-product messaging tool, we can open up the lines of communication with our users and give them every opportunity to feedback on what they need from our product.

4. Could you tell us about where we could see some improvements in the not so distant future? Greenlight Grower Management needs to be laid out more clearly but in a way that is understood by the user. There is a term I like to use – cognitive load – you’ve got a screen with lots of data on, which a user tends to get quite overwhelmed at which makes it hard to make sense of it. The aim with Greenlight Grower Management is to split the data out to make it easy to read, only showing what is needed at the time therefore reducing cognitive load. Another aim is to reduce the number of clicks to achieve a goal within the system.

From a Muddy Boots perspective I want to improve branding throughout the product. We have a strong overall brand identity and I’m keen this extends into the look and feel of our products too. Continuous improvements will also be made on the accessibility, we want to be able to access the website or app on as many devices as possible without stripping out features.

5. What work are you doing at the moment to make all of this more user friendly?

I’m looking at how the design of our products can be refined to bring a unified consistent feel to them. This includes updating the style visually and refining the user journeys. I’m working across all products to shape them into something greater, which in turn will assist the users in their day to day use of the product.

UserVoiceIn Spring 2016 we trialled UserVoice in Greenlight Grower Management and following its success we decided it should be here to stay. UserVoice has become the way to allow our users to make suggestions on our products and helps us get in touch with those that use our products every day. In Greenlight Grower Management we see these users as having an expert knowledge of both farming and the functions and features offered by the software. We’ve been really pleased to see how keen our users have been to tell us how we can make the product even better and as a result have been able to refine our roadmap to include some of the features suggested. One of the most popular ideas voted on by our users was for fertiliser plans to be implemented as a feature in the product and sure enough that’s exactly what we did. We have an ongoing stream of suggestions coming in from users with many of them under review, started or already completed!

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Jordan TandyFront-end Developer

Agrovista has been using our PC based CropWalker software for many years and it has become an essential tool for their business.

“With an increase in both workloads and the need to record greater levels of information, it

became important for us to be able to access up-to-date information and legislation at the point required and at the touch of a button, rather than having to be back in the office in front of the PC.

“We were keen to work more collaboratively with our farmers, with an ability to easily collect and share data with them and we were therefore excited to hear about Muddy Boots’ Greenlight Grower Management, a cloud-based crop recording system.

“The advantage of being a cloud-based system means that at any point in time, our customers, producers and food processors can access the latest information and share this with the relevant people immediately, instead of having to rely on a phone call or email which may be missed. This improved collaboration will save significant amounts of time and therefore costs for everyone on this new platform.

“We have been working closely with Muddy Boots throughout the development process and we have nowintegrated Greenlight Grower Management with Axis, our own internal customer platform.”

Collaborating with farmers, producers and food processors

Lewis McKerrow, Agronomist and Head of Precision/Technology at Agrovista, talks about Greenlight Grower Management and why being able to record crop data when on-farm brings huge benefits to their business.

“This new software meets all of our requirements; it enables us to capture all necessary information with mobile technology and automatically publish the information onto the Greenlight cloud, providing live and complete records for us and our farmers to access.

Lewis McKerrowAgronomist and Head of Precision/Technology

Frontier Agriculture is a leading crop production and grain marketing business. Frontier works with a team of 130 agronomists and 80 farm traders to support a large customer base which generates masses of data. James Moldon, Head of Technical Services at Frontier, discusses

Greenlight Grower Management and how the system allows them to work more collaboratively with their customers.

“We currently use our own online system called Frontier MyFarm which incorporates all the divisions of Frontier. We looked to Muddy Boots’ Greenlight Grower Management as the solution that allows us to become more interactive with our customers, and simplify the transfer of information between our agronomists, farmers and contractors. This system enables complete visibility of this process, which is vital to the way Frontier works.

“Because we deal with masses of data, farmers wanted a solution that enables them to easily obtain and record data, whether that is for budgeting purposes, traceability or simply sharing cropping information more efficiently. There are so many solutions out there that all perform different functions, but no other system works as well for our agronomists and their customers. We did look at other companies but none offered such simplicity. Our agronomists are already familiar with Muddy Boots’ CropWalker too, so we avoided the need for retraining and ultimately saved time.”The farmers benefit from this simplicity too, as the product

has been designed for their use. Being web and app-based means they can use it in the field and access data with only one or two clicks. This easy access to data is particularly important during an audit, helping farmers to meet legal requirements and feel prepared.

“For Frontier, the speed at which we can move data in a two-way sync is also beneficial. It has always been one-way traffic until now. Farmers can now input data for the agronomists to use as well. This software also loops in the operators in the field, making it the first solution that is not designed only for the farmer and farm manager.

Harnessing software to work more collaboratively with customers

James Moldon, Head of Technical Services at Frontier discusses Greenlight Grower Management and how the system allows them to work more collaboratively with their customers.

James MoldonHead of Technical Services

Greenlight Grower Management provides time savings through one time data entry, and cost savings through better efficiencies. If you are working more efficiently, you are less likely to miss out on opportunities to get your timings right. This gives us an edge in the marketplace. Because of our use of Greenlight Grower Management and MyFarm, farmers can see we have IT solutions in place for their data management, helping them make decisions that are right for their business.”

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