Harvest Season
4 Tips for Optimizing the Harvest Season
Make the most of your harvest season. Use these helpful tips to improve the productivity of your farm or orchard when harvesting.
That's the Spirit!
The future can be scary when you can't see where you are going. Effectively managing changes keeps your train on the tracks so you can enjoy the ride.
Joshua Farray
Sep 2, 2026
Last week Google inked a deal to buy Spirit Airlines’ data for “product development and training its AI models.” Nobody looking for a cheap airline ticket in 2016 could have guessed that their emails, itineraries, or support chats would be used to train AI a decade later. That story is about airlines but you should be thinking about how it relates to your farm.
Where will your data be in 2036?
In the past decade we’ve watched tech go through many trends: Social networks, ride-hailing and gig work, crypto and NFTs (remember that silliness!?), and now we’re in the era of AI. On a lower level we’ve also seen many tech companies twist with the trends. SpaceX was the impressive newcomer in the rocket-launching scene… now it’s an AI company. Kodak, yes that Kodak, launched a cryptocoin… then jumped into pharma. Even makers of high-end toilets and shoes are deciding they must become AI companies.
“AgTech” was pretty hot in 2015 when we launched. Thank goodness that isn’t why we did it! The trend, like most, didn’t last. I once heard a speaker liken ag tech to “an alien planet where investors land and realize they don’t like the atmosphere and they leave for friendlier planets”. I get it – selling tech to farms is hard work. Most farmers like routine, and you really only get 1 shot a year at your sales pitch.
This difficulty makes it tempting to chase shiny objects, but fickle pivots don’t help farmers move into the digital age. Farmers need service providers with vision and purpose who will provide stability for the long haul.
Change is exciting for tech inventors, not farmers
A lot of farmers are still using pen and paper, or very old software, because change is scary. When you’re operating on low margins and already at the whims of many things outside of your control, this makes sense. You can’t afford to make a change that isn’t going to work out. You especially can’t afford to depend on a vendor who very well may not be in the same business, or in business at all, next season.
No farm stays in business by letting fear make the decisions and, if you’re smart, you’re thinking about this but you aren’t paralyzed by it. Vendor selection is tricky. It always depends on the unique details of your situation, but there are still some ground truths you can build on.
I’ll share our internal framework for vendor selection:
| Criteria | Context |
|---|---|
| Are they selling what we need? | Not just “can they provide the service I need?”, but “are my needs an afterthought while they sell me something else?”. If the seller’s priorities don’t match ours, they’re probably a bad fit even if they can provide the service we need. |
| How long have they been in business? | Young companies often haven’t found the sharp edges of their domain yet. This matters a lot in niche businesses. They also may not yet be self-sustaining as a business which means the future is uncertain. |
| Are they trustworthy? | This can be tricky and we have to look at the company they keep. It’s not as simple as whether they have high-profile users, but whether they have long-term partnerships. Who, if anyone, are they obligated to in the long term? |
| Are they secure? |
We look for providers that don’t just use buzzwords but pass inspections by independent third-party auditors. This is especially important to us as it’s required by our own Information Security Policy. |
| Are we the customer or the product? | This helps establish whether they are going to be a long-term partner. For example, Google offers many services for free because users are the product, while advertisers are the true customer. Google is notorious for aggressively shutting down services that people are using if they can’t monetize the advertising. |
| Are they still innovating? | Innovation is essential, even if they’ve been around for a long time. Experienced and stable are good. Outdated and stagnant are not. Companies that are no longer investing in their platform are not planning for a long-term future. |
| What are the payment terms? | Large up-front payments scream “lock-in”. If the revenue from our account is front-loaded, the provider is less-incentivized (and sometimes less-capable) to deliver the promised service. |
Predicting the future is impossible, but this framework makes it less scary. We can confidently pick service providers and invest in change because we are reasonably certain they will be around for as long as we need them.
Hazmat
Back on the data conversation… have you ever heard the phrase “data is the new oil”? Most people focus on the commodity value, especially at scale, but I’m going to focus on data as toxic waste. You might be asking yourself how data can be toxic. You might then remember that Google is buying old chat messages from a bankrupt airline so they can train their AI. You might also be aware of the nonstop barrage of breaches and leaks.
Just as you have to handle chemicals carefully, you have to handle data carefully. If ransomware held your accounting or payroll file hostage in the middle of harvest, could you recover? A 2025 IBM report found that 76% of affected organizations took over 100 days to recover from a data breach. There goes harvest!
It’s tempting to think that staying with paper records is more resilient, but that’s only true if you ignore the weak link in the chain: at some point, paper records have to go into software (even if you’re cutting paper checks). When that software is on your desktop or laptop you need to be a cyber-security expert and maintain backups. Moving to the cloud introduces the risk that your service provider is going to get breached, pivot to a new business, or close their doors.
Practicing what we preach
Earlier I shared our vendor selection framework with you. This isn’t just an abstract thought experiment or some AI-slop (n.b. none of my posts are ever written by AI) – this is literally how we judge our vendors and service providers and we hold ourselves to the same standard.
- We are focused on managing labor records for your farm. Time & attendance, employee activity, wages, and more. Even as the world becomes less personal, we know that farming is dependent on humans. We don’t do everything your farm needs, we’re just the best at the part we do.
- We have decades of experience. FieldClock was founded in 2015 but my partners and I have been in and around farming for generations. We know farming and we know what it takes to run a business.
- We are trustworthy. Don’t take my word for it. We’re teamed-up with the Voice of Agriculture, and the largest payroll provider in the US. (And we have another awesome partnership that will be announced later this month.)
- We are secure. Again, don’t take my word for it. We publish our policies and recurring third-party audits.
- You, the farmer, are our customer. You pay us. We provide you with service. It’s that simple. We don’t give our service away for below cost in the hope that we can sell our company to some future bagholder.
- We are constantly innovating. Subscribe to our product updates feed to get new updates in your inbox.
- We have the most flexible payment terms around. Transparent pricing, month-to-month options, discounts for commitments, Perpetual Price Lock. Nobody else comes close.
Future-proof your farm
Take the leap into the future with FieldClock. It’s the least-risky decision you’ll make for your farm this year.
Sign up now, or talk to our sales team if you have questions.
-josh