Farms and production units

A farm in Intecrop can hold more than one production unit. So when you take on new land, or you are setting up for the first time with several PUC codes, you have to decide: is this another production unit on the farm you already have, or a farm of its own?

There is a simple test, and it is not about paperwork. It is about whether the same people and the same equipment do the work.

What a production unit is

A production unit is a PUC code, with a name if you want one. Every block belongs to one. That is all it is.

Its job is to say where the fruit came from. The code travels with the block through your records and onto the documents that go to the packhouse or the auditor. If you export, the code is issued to you — you are recording it, not inventing it.

You can add one to a farm at any time, and a farm can have as many as it needs.

What you can change later

Nothing about a production unit is fixed once you have added it.

• Give it a name. The code is what the packhouse and the auditor need. A name is for you — "Home block", "River side" — and it shows up next to the code everywhere in the app.
• Correct the code. If you typed it wrong, fix it. Nothing stores a copy of the code, so correcting it here corrects it on every application and every report already filed under it. That is what you want for a typo, and it is the only thing this is for. It is not a way to hand your records to a new code.
• Draw its boundary on the map. Its blocks already show on the farm map; drawing the outline of the unit itself puts a frame around them. It is the registered edge of the land, and it does not change when you replant.
• Take it off the list. If you no longer farm that land, remove the unit. It stops showing up when you add a block or start an application, and everything filed under it stays exactly where it is. Turn on Show removed to see it again, and add the same code back to bring the unit itself back with all its history.
• Move a block to a different unit. If a block was filed under the wrong code, move it. Both units have to be on the same farm.

You cannot remove your last production unit, and you cannot remove one that still has blocks on it. Move the blocks first.

The same code on two farms

A code has to be different from the other codes on your farm. Adding one you already have does not make a second unit — you will be told the farm already uses it.

Another farm using the same code is not your problem, and Intecrop will not stop you. Land gets sold, and the code goes with the land: the farm that sold it keeps its own history filed under that code, and you start fresh under it. Both are right at the same time.

What a farm is

A farm is where everything else lives. One farm holds:

• The chemical stores, and the stock in them
• The operators who do the spraying
• The tractors and the sprayers
• The people who use Intecrop, and what each of them is allowed to see
• The crops, and the month each one's season starts
• The PHI guidelines
• The account the invoices go to

The test

Ask one question about the land you are adding:

Does it share the same chemical store, the same tractors and sprayers, and the same operators as the land you already have?

If yes, add a production unit to the farm you have.

If no, set it up as a separate farm.

That is the whole rule. It works because of how the app records an application: the block you spray carries its production unit, but the store you draw from, the tractor, the sprayer and the operator are all picked from the farm. Nothing narrows those lists down by production unit.

So if two production units on one farm do not share their equipment, every one of those lists shows you things that are not there. You get a choice of operators who work somewhere else, tractors that are an hour's drive away, and stores you cannot actually draw from. Sooner or later somebody picks the wrong one, and the stock figures stop matching the store.

When it is one farm

Put them on one farm, as separate production units, when the codes describe parts of one working operation:

• One store, one set of stock
• The same crew, moving between the blocks
• The same tractors and sprayers
• One account, one invoice

This is very common. Plenty of operations carry three or four PUC codes and are one farm in every way that matters on the day — the codes exist because a packhouse or an export scheme asks for them, not because the land is run separately.

When it is separate farms

Set it up as its own farm when the land is really run on its own:

• It has its own chemical store. This is the clearest sign. Two stores that are stocked and counted separately should be two farms, so each one's stock and costs stand on their own.
• It has its own crew and its own equipment. Different operators, different tractors, different sprayers.
• Different people should see it. Someone given a role on a farm sees all of that farm. If a manager should see one part and not the other, they have to be separate farms — there is no way to fence off a production unit.
• It is a separate business, or gets its own invoice.
• The crops run on a different calendar. The month a season starts is set per farm, per crop.

Distance on its own is not the test. Two blocks an hour apart that are worked by the same crew out of the same store are still one farm. Two blocks next door to each other, each with its own store and its own people, are two farms.

When some of it is shared

Sometimes the answer is not clean — shared tractors, separate stores, say.

Go with the chemical store. It carries the stock and the money, and getting it wrong is the mistake that is hardest to unpick later. Shared equipment is an inconvenience you can live with; shared stock that should have been separate means months of figures that do not add up.

Side by side

Reports cover one farm at a time, and you can break any report down by production unit — so putting things on one farm does let you see them together. Do not let that decide it for you. If the work is run separately, one farm will cause you more trouble in the daily capturing than the combined report is worth.

If it is already set up the wrong way

This happens, usually because the operation grew one code at a time and each new one was set up as a new farm.

We can move things for you, but it is not something you should do by hand. It means moving stock, records and history between accounts, and it needs care. Get in touch and we will sort it out with you. Do not re-enter the data — you would lose the history, which is the part worth having.