Agriculture: fields, crop cycles, livestock, automation, costing and harvest revenue

#Purpose and scope

This chapter covers the Agriculture module: field, crop type, livestock profile and animal group master data, the crop-cycle lifecycle with costing and harvest revenue, livestock feeding and cost entries, irrigation and feeding automation, and season comparison.

#Before you start

1. Expense, payable (or cash), receivable and revenue ledgers in the chart of accounts. They are only needed when you post a cost or a harvest.
2. Permissions: agriculture.cost.post (post a crop-cycle cost), agriculture.harvest.record (record a harvest), agriculture.livestock_cost.post (post a livestock cost) and agriculture.cycle.transition (start or close a cycle). The seeded FARM-MANAGER role is described as owning field and crop planning, irrigation scheduling, sensor-driven decisions and cost and harvest postings.
3. For automation, IoT devices bound to the field or animal group (see the IoT guide).

#1. Master data

1. Create Fields with a code, name and area in hectares. Purpose is Crop, Pasture or Barn. Soil type, location (free text) and company scope are optional.
2. Create Crop types with the soil moisture, temperature and humidity ranges the crop prefers, an optional growing-degree-day base temperature and the typical days to harvest.
3. Create Livestock profiles with the body temperature range and the feed ration per head with its unit.
4. Create Animal groups (herd or pen) with species and head count, optionally linked to a field and a livestock profile.

#2. Plan and start a crop cycle

1. Open Crop cycles and create a cycle with a code, field, crop type, planting date, expected harvest date, expected yield and unit, and budgeted cost. The expected harvest date cannot be before the planting date, and the field must exist.
2. Optionally break the budget down by seed, labour, irrigation and other categories. The Budgeted Cost total stays independent of the breakdown.
3. Open the cycle and choose Start cycle. Only a Planned cycle can be started; it becomes Growing.

#3. Record and post costs

1. On the cycle’s Cost Entries tab add a cost with a description and a positive amount. Choose the expense ledger (debit) and the payable or cash ledger (credit); they are only required to post.
2. Post the entry to the ledger (needs agriculture.cost.post). Posting debits the expense ledger and credits the payable ledger, and tags the journal to the cycle so actuals roll up per cycle. Posting twice has no further effect.

#4. Harvest and revenue

1. On the Harvest & Revenue tab enter the actual harvest date, the actual yield quantity and the sale rate per unit (all positive), and choose a receivable ledger and a revenue ledger.
2. Record the harvest (needs agriculture.harvest.record). BSuit posts a journal for yield × rate: debit receivable, credit revenue. The cycle becomes Harvested.

#5. Close the cycle

1. Post or delete every unposted cost entry.
2. Choose Close cycle on a Harvested cycle (needs agriculture.cycle.transition).

#6. Livestock feeding and costs

1. Record each feed dispense in Feeding events: animal group, time, source, quantity and unit.
2. On a feeding event choose Create cost entry. Pick the basis: unit cost × quantity dispensed, or a total amount, and optionally the expense and payable ledgers.
3. Open the animal group and, on its Cost Entries tab, post the entry (needs agriculture.livestock_cost.post). Posting debits the expense ledger and credits the payable ledger, tagged to the animal group.

#7. Irrigation and feeding automation

Every field and animal group starts with automation Off. In Fields and Animal groups choose Dry run or Live per record. Off only alerts and never actuates; Dry run logs what it would do without sending a command; Live issues a real IoT command. Irrigation events and Feeding events show the log, with the source (manual, rule or dry run).

#8. Compare seasons

Season comparison groups every crop cycle by crop type and planting year and shows expected and actual yield, budgeted and actual cost, yield and cost variance and net margin. Actuals are sourced from the ledger.