# Waste Management in FarmOS

**URL:** <https://farmos.discourse.group/t/waste-management-in-farmos/1588>\
**Category:** Using farmOS\
**Created:** [March 26, 2023, 1:44am UTC](https://farmos.discourse.group/t/waste-management-in-farmos/1588 "2023-03-26T01:44:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![WorkingJB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d07c76/32.png) [@WorkingJB](https://farmos.discourse.group/u/WorkingJB)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 1:44am UTC](https://farmos.discourse.group/t/waste-management-in-farmos/1588/1 "2023-03-26T01:44:13Z")

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Hi Team,

I’ve been playing around with a demo of FarmOS and I love everything about it, but one of the things that we’re trying to get better about is loss/waste management, so if we have crop that is left in the field we can try and document what isn’t harvested/sold. I found this thread: [Loss of Product Event](https://farmos.discourse.group/t/loss-of-product-event/652) but that seemed to be mostly how to log that it happened, not to track quantities and then potentially evaluate over time. Has anyone come up with anything better?

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**Author:** ![Symbioquine](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/farmos.discourse.group/symbioquine/32/284_2.png) [@Symbioquine](https://farmos.discourse.group/u/Symbioquine)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 2:21am UTC](https://farmos.discourse.group/t/waste-management-in-farmos/1588/2 "2023-03-26T02:21:52Z")

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As with anything one hopes to track in farmOS, I’d ask; what are you going to do with the resulting data and how/if you already measure/track it (in the real world)?

The answers to those two questions will probably make it easier to suggest a strategy for capturing the data in farmOS…

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**Author:** ![WorkingJB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d07c76/32.png) [@WorkingJB](https://farmos.discourse.group/u/WorkingJB)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 11:25pm UTC](https://farmos.discourse.group/t/waste-management-in-farmos/1588/3 "2023-03-26T23:25:10Z")

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For us we’re just trying to get a better handle on what gets left in the field and then figuring out if honestly there’s anything that we **can** do with it. Ideally we’d be able to inventory and then find alternative vendors that might be interested in what we have, but currently it’s just about data capture going into this next season.

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**Author:** ![mstenta](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/farmos.discourse.group/mstenta/32/4_2.png) [@mstenta](https://farmos.discourse.group/u/mstenta)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2023, 2:00pm UTC](https://farmos.discourse.group/t/waste-management-in-farmos/1588/4 "2023-03-27T14:00:07Z")

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Welcome to the forum @WorkingJB!

I like the idea of tracking that - makes sense! Maybe the specific next question to ask (along the lines of @Symbioquine’s suggestion) is: how would you record this in real life?

Here are the high-level docs for how inventory tracking works in farmOS:

> **[Inventory tracking](https://farmos.org/guide/inventory/)**
>
> farmOS is a free and open source web-based application for farm management, planning, and record keeping.

> **[Inventory](https://farmos.org/model/logic/inventory/)**
>
> farmOS is a free and open source web-based application for farm management, planning, and record keeping.

Basically: you start with an asset (eg: a “2023 Broccoli” plant asset), and then you use logs to increment/decrement/reset the asset’s inventory over time. These can be seeding logs, observation logs, harvest logs, etc.

> we’re just trying to get a better handle on what gets left in the field and then figuring out if honestly there’s anything that we **can** do with it

To accomplish this, first you need some way of **measuring** what’s left in the field. This will vary by crop, of course, and sometimes will just be an estimate (eg: you can’t know how many pounds of broccoli are standing in the field until you harvest and weigh them).

So maybe you could have a standard procedure for estimating what’s left, and record that as an observation log that set’s the asset’s inventory to an estimated value. Then, you can use harvest logs to decrement that inventory over time. Whatever inventory is left is the estimated waste/unsold product.