The situation before
New Age Custom Farming is a family operation in southern Wisconsin in the US. The core of the business is contract forage harvesting: mowing, merging, chopping, carting, packing and bagging lucerne and maize silage. Alongside that runs a contract spraying operation, some contract planting, harvesting of soybeans and maize, and cash crops on their own land. In season, the crews work every day the sun shines.
Spraying records lived on paper. The team filled in the spray logs the US state requires, printed boundary maps, and jotted notes in the cab. The office work often happened weeks later, and by then the crew could have covered thousands of acres. Invoicing was the hardest part. Plans change out in the field: an operator arrives, sees a different problem and adds a product. If nobody remembers that two weeks later, it never makes it onto the invoice.
Because I know when I leave the field exactly what I did. I get it all in the app, and then there's no question about what happened out there.
Why they chose FarmBackup
Avery started with the sprayers because that is the gear he runs himself, so he could see first-hand how the system worked. He fitted the trackers on his own, sticking each unit to the frame by the battery box. Even with patchy mobile coverage in parts of the county, the tracking has been reliable enough for daily use.
What changed
Invoicing captured before leaving the paddock. At the end of each job, Avery parks at the paddock edge and logs the work and products in FarmBackup Task. Back in the office the invoice is already worked out. He estimates it saved him about 20 hours of invoicing work this season, with fewer missed items and more confidence in every invoice sent.
Evidence when a job is questioned. When a neighbour of a client's property raised a drift concern this US summer, Avery could pull up exactly when the sprayer was in the paddock. Having the GPS record alongside his spray log showed that the operation tracks precisely what it does.
Tender and sprayer meet without phone calls. On days with lots of moves, the team brings a tender truck to the sprayer. With the live map, Avery can see where the sprayer is, know where it is heading next, and have the next load mixed and waiting when it pulls in. No chasing, and no sprayer sitting idle.
What's next
The chopping crew is the next step. That work is charged by the hour, involves many people and machines, and still runs on paper sheets handed in at the end of the day. Avery sees trackers there, with operator training on the app, as the biggest time saver yet for whoever pulls the invoicing together. He would also like trackers on the trucks and grain trucks, so the combine operator can see when trucks are queued at the grain facility and switch to slower ground instead of waiting full in the paddock. FarmBackup's new paddock status tools, which mark paddocks as ready to harvest or spray, are part of the plan for next season.
Advice for other agricultural contractors
Avery is clear that the system rewards effort: you still have to use it actively. For contractors who will act on what the data shows, he recommends it.
"If you're a data person and you really want to lock in on what's going on in your operation, it's definitely a good system to use. It really ties everything together nicely." – Avery Elsing, New Age Custom Farming
