Time is Money: Minimizing Steps for a More Profitable Farm

Think about your daily routine. How many extra steps do you and your team take navigating the farm? How many minutes are lost searching for tools or information?

It might seem insignificant, but it adds up. Let’s say you have an employee who takes an average of 3,000 extra steps per day due to inefficient farm layout or unclear task assignments. If we estimate each step takes about 1 seconds, that’s 3,000 seconds wasted, per day. Multiplied by 200 workdays in a growing season, that amounts to 166.6 hours lost each year, per employee! At $20 an hour, that’s over $3,300 of lost productivity that could be going directly to your bottom line.

Plan Smart, Plant Smart

Strategic planning is your first line of defense against unnecessary steps. Software like Heirloom, with its Crop Map feature, can be invaluable for visualizing your layout and grouping crops effectively. Consider placing crops with similar watering, fertilizing, and harvesting schedules close together. For example, if you use the same type of compost for multiple crops, it would be smart to plant them near each other on your farm. Also, locate frequently harvested crops near your washing and packing station. Plan successions of the same crop in adjacent beds to minimize travel time during planting, maintenance, and harvest.

Design for Flow: Centralize and Streamline

Think about the flow of your daily tasks and design your farm layout accordingly. Centralize the storage of frequently used tools to minimize the need to constantly backtrack. Ensure pathways are wide enough for easy movement with tools and wheelbarrows, and provide direct routes between key areas. Position your washing and packing station strategically to minimize transport distances between the field, the packing area, and your storage or delivery point.

Task Grouping

Grouping similar tasks reduces the back-and-forth across your farm. Perform all bed preparation tasks, like amending and raking, in one area before moving to the next. When assigning tasks, prioritize those located close to each other. Heirloom’s customizable task templates can help by creating detailed checklists. You can, for example, use the Task Chart feature to specify that fertilizing a specific crop requires a certain type of fertilizer and a spreader. This ensures that all necessary tools and materials are gathered before heading out to the field, minimizing wasted trips.

Every time we choose efficiency, every time we eliminate a wasted step, we’re making a statement about the kind of future we want to create. It’s a future where farming is both productive and fulfilling, where we work in harmony with nature, and where good food nourishes all. Let’s make that future profitable, together.

-JM