I think FarmOS asset types are missing a one for farm end products. As a farm with a crop operation, FarmOS has Assets for Seed and Plants, but the end product for me is Grain. Today I sort of get by using the Lot Code field for tracking my end product through my record system. I think it would be useful to have an Product asset that could then utilize all the inventory tracking FarmOS has in place.
Definition Per USDA NOP 205.2 Agricultural Product - Any agricultural commodity or product, whether raw or processed, including any commodity or product derived from livestock, that is marketed in the United States for human or livestock consumption from USDA NOP Terms
I think thereās general agreement that a āProductā asset type makes sense. Lots of next step questions after thatā¦ but maybe it would be worth proposing we add this asset type as an optional module to farmOS core, so that that experimentation can begin in earnest. And so current users could start tracking product assets themselves in the meantime.
Glad to see the continued effort. I think this can lead to supporting a critical inspection requirement for organic crop operations. Possibly other systems as well. The inspectors need to complete a mass balance evaluation. This evaluates seeding rates. yelds, and resulting product produced to ensure all ties and makes sense. I think FarmOS could genenerate a mass balance report for a given crop. This would be a huge help to inspection process.
@graffte Agreed! Small step for a pull request, big step longer term.
FYI: The pull request was merged and farmOS 3.1.0 was released on Friday. Iām in the process of updating Farmier-hosted instances this weekend, so Product assets will become an option for you soon.
Note that this does NOT include any UI features specifically to support the creation/maintenance of products. They are just another asset type. So essentially they are part of the data model now, but thereās more work to do to make helper features to make them more usable in the frontend.
One related feature in v3.1.0 is a new Inventory quick form, which when combined with Product assets makes it easier maintain product inventory levels. My next idea is to create a Harvest quick form that offers options for automatically creating/incrementing Product assets, which will also help.
The promise and benefits of product data is obvious! The challenge, as always, is making it easy to enter and maintain that data. One step at a timeā¦ and love to hear all ideas folks have!
