Straight answers to the questions family farmers and co-op managers ask before signing up.
Yes. HarvestBot pulls your crop plan data — fields, crops, planted acres, and intended use — and formats it for FSA-578 submission. You still need to submit the report through your county FSA office or the USDA farmers.gov portal, but HarvestBot eliminates the manual data gathering. Your farm and tract numbers are stored in the system so you do not need to look them up each year.
Yes. HarvestBot tracks your ARC-CO and PLC elections by farm number and calculates estimated payments based on current commodity prices, county yields, and effective reference prices. This helps you model which program election is more favorable before the annual sign-up deadline. It does not file the election for you — that is done through FSA — but it gives you the analysis to make the decision.
HarvestBot tracks your CRP and EQIP contract acres, payment schedules, and practice requirements. For CRP, it monitors re-enrollment deadlines and mid-contract management obligations. For EQIP, it tracks practice implementation timelines and cost-share payment schedules. This keeps everything in one place instead of scattered across FSA letters and NRCS file folders.
HarvestBot creates a contemporaneous record of field conditions during prevented planting situations. It logs weather data, soil moisture estimates, photos, and your narrative notes — the kind of documentation that crop insurance adjusters and FSA offices want to see. Having this digital trail is significantly better than trying to reconstruct events weeks or months after the fact.
No. Your crop insurance agent handles policy selection, premium calculations, and claims. HarvestBot complements them by maintaining the yield history, planting records, and field documentation that support your coverage. When your agent needs your APH yields or planting dates, you can export them in seconds instead of digging through old tax returns.
Yes. HarvestBot stores your actual production history (APH) yields by crop, by field, going back as many years as you enter. It calculates your approved APH yield and shows how adding or dropping a year of data affects your guarantee. This is especially useful when evaluating yield exclusion (YE) options or trend adjustment (TA) benefits.
HarvestBot maintains planting dates, seeding rates, input application records, field photographs, weather history, and harvest data — all timestamped and organized by field. If you need to file a claim, you have a complete digital record rather than relying on memory and handwritten notes.
HarvestBot tracks which of your fields are classified as highly erodible land (HEL) and flags the conservation practices required to maintain compliance. It stores your conservation plan details and reminds you of required practices like residue management, waterway maintenance, and buffer strip obligations. Losing conservation compliance means losing access to all USDA program benefits, so this tracking is critical.
Yes. For organic operations, HarvestBot maintains field-by-field input records that comply with National Organic Program (NOP) requirements. It tracks approved input applications, buffer zones, and transition timelines. These records can be exported for your certifying agent during annual inspections.
HarvestBot tracks cover crop species, planting dates, termination dates, and methods for each field. If you are enrolled in NRCS conservation programs or state-level cover crop incentive programs, the documentation is already organized for reporting requirements.
HarvestBot aggregates weather data from multiple sources: NOAA National Weather Service forecasts and alerts, state mesonet networks (like Iowa Environmental Mesonet), NEXRAD radar for precipitation estimates, and satellite-derived soil moisture indices. This multi-source approach gives you more accurate, field-level data than any single weather app.
GDD calculations use the modified sine-wave method based on your nearest weather station data, adjusted for your field coordinates. Accuracy depends on station proximity, but our multi-source approach typically produces results within 2-3% of on-farm measurements. You can also input your own field temperatures if you have on-farm sensors.
The Grower and Co-op plans support data import from popular on-farm weather stations including Davis, Onset, and Campbell Scientific hardware. This gives you the most accurate field-level data possible, supplemented by our satellite and radar estimates for broader area coverage.
All data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Your farm data is never shared with grain traders, input suppliers, landlords, or anyone else. You own your data and can export or delete it at any time. We do not sell aggregate data. Period.
Most family farms are up and running in 30-60 minutes. Enter your fields (or import from CLU maps), add your crops, and set your county. Historical data entry takes longer, but you can backfill yield records and input costs over time — the system is useful from day one.
On the Grower and Co-op plans, you can create read-only access for landlords, farm managers, crop consultants, or lenders. You control exactly which fields and which data each person can see. This is useful for providing landlords with yield reports without exposing your full financial picture.
Basic data entry works with intermittent connectivity — entries are saved locally and synced when you get a signal. Real-time features like weather alerts and market prices require a data connection. Most modern farm operations have cell coverage on most of their ground, but we designed the app to handle spotty rural connectivity.
Yes. No contracts, no cancellation fees. Cancel from your account settings and your subscription ends at the end of the current billing period. Your data remains exportable for 90 days after cancellation.
Start a free trial and see for yourself, or email us at support@harvestbot.ai.
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