Today was the first time since implementing FarmOS that we have had to cut down a crop we did not harvest or sell.
How would I denote a planting had inputs like seeding, inventory, logs, events, observations etc but never went to harvest. I just cut it down.
Would it be advisable to enter some sort of 0 harvest event?
I want to be able to somehow account for the fact that no weight or product came out of all the work and money I put into it
Good question @mbillion !
I think ultimately this could be determined without any additional logs. But it may be useful to have some strict indicator for some cases.
If the costs are being tracked per-asset, and no harvests are recorded, it can be assumed that it was a loss (if/until a harvest is added). So I think the real deciding factor will be: who is asking the question, and when/where/how? I can imagine a report generator that has a date range option, which summarizes current expenses+income for each asset.
This also makes me think about the “asset lifecycle” conversation, for keeping track of an asset’s current “growth stage” or “lifecycle stage”. One of the “stages” might be “terminated”, which could be factored into the report generator logic (eg: if an asset has expenses but no income, and it is terminated, consider it a loss). Or something like that. 
Oh geez! On this one I can see how I could have some opinions on the project lifecycle or growth stage stuff.
However, on this one I got asked the question when I had to burn a rack of product how that would be represented in farmOS and lacking an answer I put that question in the parking lot. Really just looking for general feedback so I can answer the question
In the meta-data-driven-farmOS-sphere context free - My knee jerk in my original post was to put in a 0 quantity harvest event which instantly churned my stomach for divide by zero error coding reasons.
Its not really a 0 harvest either, there was product there, we just cut it down and threw it away.
If I was roughing it out - the most logical pathway in my mind would be that you would almost “harvest” this into a dead inventory bucket - same thing if you were doing packaged bags of lettuce and you had stuff that you bagged up but could never sell - you would need some dead inventory - dumps, ive heard others call the same idea disking…
As an additional point not related to my farm - but something like this could also prove useful for outdoor farmers that do something like plant a cover crop, attempt to sell it, but if they cannot, fold it into their soil.
In this way you have the cover crop as something you can turn into some other asset; if it goes the traditional harvest > sale route no problem.
But what if you want to disk it down, and fold it into the soil? its almost like you would have to turn the cover crop seeding or planting asset into a soil input. Think about matching up a soil test nutrient value to the decision to fold a cover crop into the soil?
Again just thoughts - I really just needed an answer to the financial folks asking me how I planned to show this in farmOS and I have my answer - the lack of a harvest event is the answer. Makes enough sense to me for now
We utilize it to track gourmet mushroom strains and varieties down to the bag. I utilize it to track source of spores, external spawn, petri dishes, and each individual bag of mushroom.
Sadly we battle contamination that basically does what’s described above. Each harvest is destroyed if contamination if found within the bag or petri dish etc. We utilize QR codes for quick access to the database for each asset, however my only option has been to add an observation of contamination and then just archive the asset.
I’d definitely prefer something else when harvests are destroyed.
Yeah mines vertical indoor hydroponic and probably not as frequently as mushrooms but every once in a while some plant malady will pop up and infect a whole rack. I think it happens to everybody (or at least those of us regularly testing). Additional I can almost always get away with using water, nutrient, light and air on my grows - no need for copper - although, if I did use copper I would never have this problem again.
Either way - yes its going to happen again - It would be cool to have a better way to track trashing a whole rack (or bag or unit or bed or field or whatever)
++ do you have any posts on the QR codes? Ever be willing to give me a virtual rundown of the setup? did you implement this or have a vendor do this for you? I am very interested in doing something similar for tracking of individual trays, and it sounds like you already have a solution figured out
Hi everyone, this reminds me of the time when our farm manager decided to plant a hectare of asparagus. It was not profitable as the buck used to eat the tips off as they came to the surface. Everyone said once you have planted asparagus you are unable to get rid of it. Well, sadly to say that my husband just plowed up the field, and did prepared the same hectare for something else. No more asparagus. Is this what the original questioner was asking? This was done during the 1990’s.
Yes - pretty much - what would be the best way to represent that in FarmOS so that your numbers and analysis still looked goode
I like your idea @mbillion of a “zero quantity harvest”… it could work for you anyway. Until we have a more hard-defined way to represent this in the data model, this is largely a “convention” question.
In other words: as long as you stick to the convention you develop, you’ll have consistent data. We’ve been talking a lot of about the idea of “conventions” more generally… and how they can “bubble up” to create more official designations in the data model itself as folks come to agreement (like in this topic!).
See: Creating a standard 'interpretation' layer on top of core farmOS schema
And this draft I’m working on in the data model documentation: farmOS/index.md at 2.x-docs · mstenta/farmOS · GitHub
super cool I will take a look and get back to you. I agree that this is pretty much a how do we as an organization treat these events but it kind of snow balled into a larger discussion as well.
The only thing I do not like about “Zero Harvest” or really any “Zero Event” is that my database/analytics experience tells me that inevitably zeros cause problems (the divide by zero error I discussed before). Not that there are not robust and well studied ways to deal with this but given the unique opportunity to build FarmOS 2.0 from the ground up, seems like avoiding built-in zero event structure would be prudent
