Built on a farm, not in a boardroom.

AcreCast is written by a working row-crop farmer in western Kentucky who is also customer number one. The features get argued with from the cab before they ship, which is why the acre totals come off the boundary instead of off a form, and why unmapped ground reads unknown rather than zero.

The idea, in one paragraph

Every recommendation a farmer gets comes from somebody paid on what he buys. Seed reps sell seed. Chemical reps sell chemical. The co-op agronomist works for the co-op. There’s supposed to be a person on the other side of that — an independent crop consultant — and most farms never hire one. AcreCast is an attempt at being that, in software, for the price of two bags of seed.

The whole design follows from it. The subscription is the only money we make, so nothing in the app has a reason to talk you into a bigger order. When the model says your rate is above the economic optimum, it says so, in dollars, with a test strip to settle it in the field rather than an argument at the counter.

Three rules we build to

• The records are yours. Not ours, not the dealer’s, not the co-op’s. They leave whole, in one download, any day, whether you’re paying us or not.
• Missing is never fine. If we don’t know your acres, the screen says unknown. If a field got left out of a report, the report names it and says why. Software that renders a hole as a zero will eventually cost somebody money.
• Say where a number came from. Measured on your farm, derived, or assumed — every input is labeled, and an assumed one is never dressed up as a measured one.

Where the product stands today

Early, and honest about it. The browser app is in daily use on a real farm through a real season. The iPhone app exists for logging in the field but isn’t on the App Store yet. There are things a farmer would reasonably expect that aren’t built — they’re all listed on the straight answers page rather than left for you to find out.