Farm Record Keeping Made Simple with the FBN® App

Brian Paff

Sep 15, 2021

There’s a lot to keep up with when you’re farming. You’ve got to maintain records of seed varieties planted, chem purchases, field maps, pesticide and fertilizer applications, scale tickets and more. 

And organizing all of this information in a way that lets you access it when needed and use it to support your operation can be a challenge, to say the least.

Is it in 3-ring binders and file cabinets? Stored in spreadsheet files on USB drives? Sorted by field? By date? By operation or landowner? By year or by crop? 

On top of all that, you’re already busy. Throughout the crop year, you are spending a majority of your time doing the actual fieldwork for which all of that record keeping accounts.

So carving out time to analyze data and make decisions with it can be tough.

Track all your on-farm activities with one easy-to-use app

What you need is a simple, streamlined way to document and manage data for your operation, and that’s where the FBN® app and its built-in record keeping tools — included in your free FBN member account* — come into the picture.

Start managing your farm’s record keeping in one app.

Become an FBN member today

Within the My Operation tab in your FBN account, you can easily log, organize and access your farm’s activities and information from the convenience of your mobile phone or desktop computer.

Once you’ve entered field boundaries or uploaded precision files to your account, you can start tracking field-by-field planting information, tillage, fertilizer and chemical applications, free satellite imagery and yield data — all in one place. 

You can also manually add scouting notes and document pest pressure in order to stay on top of each individual field.

Plus you can grant access to other farmers on your operation to use the app to ensure everyone on your team has the insights they need to make confident, informed decisions.

Furthermore, you can upload invoices for seed and crop protection products to keep track of your input expenses and manage contracts and bids, sales and more using FBN® Profit Center.

Our record keeping software works with MyJohnDeere℠ and AFS Connect™ (Case New Holland Industrial) as well, allowing you to seamlessly integrate data from either platform into your FBN account.

Gain insights from a network of farmers

The benefits of having all of your operational data organized in one central location and right at your fingertips are obvious.

But when you enter specific data into your FBN account, you’re then able to unlock corresponding insights developed from anonymized information contributed by other farmers across the network. 

If you add harvest data from the most recent year, for example, you can access detailed yield data for more than 5,000 seed products in FBN® Seed Finder

You can also then leverage network data to benchmark your farm’s performance according to various parameters you choose to better evaluate your own practices and decision-making. 

Adding invoices to your account will also give you access to FBN® Price Transparency.

Upload a crop protection product invoice, for example, and you can then use Price Transparency when shopping for pesticides.

In the same way, contributing a seed invoice enables Price Transparency when browsing seed products in Seed Finder. 

And, for U.S. farmers, uploading a seed tag unlocks seed relabeling information to help you determine if the same seed genetics are being sold under other brand names.

Your data will always remain completely secure and anonymous on an individualized basis, and will never be shared with other farmers or third parties without your consent. 

Create your free account to start using FBN Benchmarking

Ready to get a more accurate picture of your farm’s performance? Sign up for a free member account and upload some planting/seeding and harvest data to put Benchmarking to work on your operation.


* Access to My Operation record keeping tools is included with free FBN membership; fees may apply for certain product and service offerings other than membership. Free membership is currently available to Canadian farmers in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

MyJohnDeere is a trademark of Deere & Company. AFS Connect™ is a trademark of CNH Industrial America LLC. Roundup PowerMAX® is a registered trademark of Monsanto Technology, LLC. InVigor® and LibertyLink® are registered trademarks of BASF Canada Inc.

© 2015-2021 Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. All rights reserved. The sprout logo, “Farmers Business Network”, “FBN”, “FBN Direct”, “Farmers First” and the Farmers First flag logo are registered trademarks and service marks of Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. or its affiliates and are used with permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Brian Paff

Sep 15, 2021