Apr 7, 2007

PDAs Add Efficiency to Farm Operations

A Palm Pilot can be an efficient and dependable tool to keep track of picking records, said a Michigan grower.

Gary Bardenhagen from Lake Leelanau, Mich., has been using Palm Pilots to keep track of picking records for four years. Bardenhagen hires about 50 laborers to harvest his 15 acres of strawberries, 25 acres of sweet cherries, 20 acres of tart cherries and 5 acres of Balaton cherries.

For a number of years, he used to issue tickets to his workers to keep track of picking records. He said when a worker brought in a pail of fruit he would give that worker a ticket.

“At the end of the day it would take us one to one and a half hours to count all those tickets,” Bardenhagen said.

To eliminate that counting time, Bardenhagen switched over to using a punch card system for a few years, but he said the system was vulnerable because a worker could get a hold of a punch.

After that he looked into some electronic systems and purchased a portable electronic time clock for $2,500.

“We found out we were going to have way too many keystrokes for one entry with the time clock,” he said. “It was too slow and error prone.”

That’s when Bardenhagen’s son, Steve, suggested he use a Palm Pilot for piece-rate record keeping. Bardenhagen purchased a Palm Pilot IIIxe for around $200. Then Steve, who also is a computer programmer, wrote the data collection software for the Palm Pilot and a Windows application to summarize ticket data and import and export data to and from the payroll and accounting software.

He said the program works well for anyone recording piece-rate units. And it’s easy to switch pay rates from crop to crop or different pay rates within each crop.

“In our case, the primary task is to keep track of picking data to pay accordingly,” he said. “We also have different picking rates, and the program is able to change project codes. For example, when picking cherries, we charge differently depending on whether they are picking the cherries with or without the stem.”

Bardenhagen said using the Palm Pilots have saved him at least the time it took to count and input data into the payroll and accounting software with the previous record-keeping methods.

“In the harvest season, that’s a significant amount of time,” he said. “We’ve also been able to minimize error and there is no such thing as a lost ticket or lost card anymore. We have yet to have a problem.”

The only thing to worry about are the batteries going dead, Bardenhagen said. But the Palm Pilot warns the user when the two AAA batteries wear down. Those batteries only have to be swapped twice during a season, he said.

One potential downside to using a Palm Pilot is that pickers are used to always having something in their possession, Bardenhagen said.

“They (the workers) were very skeptical at first and would put a pebble in their pocket to keep track,” he said. “Then at the end of the day, they would compare the number of pebbles they had in their pockets with what we had posted for them. They eventually gained confidence in it (Palm Pilot).”

It’s a bit of a challenge to write software for Palm Pilots, but there are programmers who are willing to help, Bardenhagen said.

“If farmers want the software to be custom made, and don’t have the advantage of a son like mine, they could purchase the software from a company like T3 Technologies,” he said.

Once a farmer gets the software, it will take some time to get accustomed to it, he said. But once that happens, the farmer will be able to effectively and efficiently keep track of picking records.

To learn more about the software used in Palm Pilots for recording piece-rate units, go to www.t3tracking.com.