A notebook on the sprayer dashboard, three weeks behind
The self-propelled sprayer has a notebook on the dashboard. On a good day in spring, the operator covers a lot of ground, fills and refills, moves between farms, and writes each field down at the headland: field name, product, rate, water volume, start and finish time, wind, temperature. On a bad day, when the wind is dropping and everything has to go on before the rain, the notes get shorter. 'Home fields, T1, as rec'.
The office then has to turn that notebook into a proper spray record. Somebody sits with it, the agronomist's recommendation sheets and the chemical store delivery notes, working out what 'as rec' meant on that day, which batch of fungicide was in the tank and exactly which fields 'home fields' covered.
Everyone involved is doing their job. The record still ends up incomplete, and the gaps are only found when someone looks for them.
Why spray records drift from what happened
The obvious explanation is that operators are busy. The real one is that the notebook asks the operator to write down things they cannot easily know in the cab, and gives the office no way to check what is missing.
- Field names in the cab are what the operator calls them, which is not always the name in your records.
- Tank mixes are planned by the agronomist but changed on the day when a product runs short.
- Weather details are best recorded at the time, and they are the first thing dropped when time is short.
- Batch numbers are on the containers in the store, not in the cab.
- Part fields, re-sprays after rain and headland-only passes do not fit neatly in a notebook line.
If a contractor sprays some of your land, their record arrives in their format at their pace, and has to be merged with yours.
The cost of a spray log built from memory
Your assurance scheme, your grain buyers and the regulations all expect a spray record, and the requirements are set by them. We do not interpret them and we do not promise compliance. The practical problem is that a record rebuilt weeks later from shorthand is hard to trust and harder to defend if someone asks a question about a particular field.
It also costs money in less obvious ways. Chemical stock goes out of step with the store, so you order products you already have or run out mid-programme. The cost of a spray programme per field is hard to work out when you do not know exactly what went where. And the office spends evenings in spring and early summer, its busiest time, typing up a notebook.
An in-cab record built around your fields and store
What we build is a spray record that the operator completes in the cab as each field finishes, using lists that already hold the details they would otherwise have to remember.
- Your field list, with the names your operators actually use as well as the official ones, and field areas. On a tablet in the cab, the operator can pick the field from a map using the tablet's location.
- The planned job for that field, taken from the agronomist's recommendation, is ready to confirm or change. If the tank mix changed, the operator changes it and the reason is recorded.
- Products and batches come from your chemical store list, updated when deliveries arrive, so the operator picks what went in the tank rather than typing it.
- Weather at the start of the field can be entered by the operator, with the option of filling in a reading from a weather service for the location and time as a cross check.
- Part fields and re-sprays are handled as part-area records, with the area entered or taken from the sprayer's own coverage data where it can export it.
- Each evening the office sees completed records, any missing details, and chemical stock used, which is taken off the store list.
| Written in the notebook | Recorded in the cab screen |
|---|---|
| 'Home fields, T1, as rec' | Three fields picked from the map, each with the planned mix confirmed |
| No batch number | Batch picked from the store list |
| 'Windy later' | Wind and temperature entered at the start of each field |
| 'Top of Long Acre only' | Part area recorded with the hectares covered |
If you already use crop recording software such as Gatekeeper, we look first at whether its own mobile tools can do this, or whether we feed records into it from our screen.
A spring day with records that keep up
The operator starts at seven. At each headland, before moving on, he taps the field on the map, confirms the mix and enters the wind. When a product runs out halfway through the day, he switches to the alternative the agronomist allowed and records it. At seven in the evening, the office sees eleven completed records and one field with no finish time. A text asks the question, and the answer comes back before the operator gets home.
The chemical store list already shows what was used. When the agronomist asks what went on a particular field, the answer is on screen, not in a notebook in the cab.
Recognise your spray records here?
- Spray details are written in a cab notebook and typed up later.
- Records often say 'as rec' or 'as planned' rather than what actually went in the tank.
- Batch numbers and weather details are often missing.
- Your chemical store stock rarely matches what the records say was used.
- A contractor's spray records arrive in a different format from yours.