As estimates suggest, we’ll have to increase food production by around 60% to feed the growing global population by 2030. And that’s not the only challenge; degradation of arable land and resources, fluctuating weather patterns, and climate change are significantly affecting agricultural production in recent years.

With all these challenges in mind, it is clear that we need urgent innovations in farming operations and food production. Farmers today are thus embracing new methods that could help the agriculture industry increase its productivity while reducing its environmental impact.

While automation and precision agriculture is emerging as the next big transformation in the industry, inventory management systems are growing in importance to managing the new revolution.

What is Inventory Management in Agriculture?

Inventory simply indicates keeping track of raw materials and finished products that are in stock. A smoothly functioning inventory system is one of the keys to a successful farm operation.

An efficient farm inventory management system makes agriculture production patterns accessible to farmers. Consequently, it becomes possible to seasonally monitor agricultural activities, plan production capacities, reduce wastage of resources, and enhance stock organisation.

Consequences of Poor Inventory Management in Agriculture

Inventory management of the agro-based industry itself is a challenging task due to its perishable nature, and poor inventory management is among the top reasons why an agribusiness fails to earn profits. Farmers are generally occupied with their daily field operations and fail to keep a track of the health of their inventory management – a crucial aspect of their production.

The impact of poor inventory management can be significant on farm productivity as well as profitability. For instance, low seed stock of particular crops during their sowing season along with unfavorable weather conditions can greatly delay sowing certain crops and consequently impact germination as well as the final yield.

Poor inventory management in agriculture can also significantly impact the harvest period and storage. With the lack of insights into inventory stock levels in real-time, farmers fail to prepare adequate pallets, boxes, and bags for crop harvesting and storage. This delays the time to harvest, resulting in reduced crop quality and final yield as well as food waste in the supply chain.

FarmERP’s Inventory Management System – An Error-free Solution

As with most management functions, effective agribusiness inventory management does not just happen – it takes a lot of work. This can be simplified by farm management software such as FarmERP featuring an inventory management module.

Smart Inventory Management for Multiple Locations

Farming across different locations and housing inventory in various places remains a challenge for farmers, especially to manage high procurement operations of locally and regionally purchased farm inputs. Moreover, there’s a lot of work to do, and it’s spread out over numerous sites.

FarmERP’s inventory management shows farmers the bigger picture while giving them control over the smallest details with intuitive dashboards and calendars. The software additionally helps farmers generate and assign work orders, schedule and reschedule processes, and track progress on assigned work.

Automation of Inventory Tracking and Counting

With the agriculture industry contributing a significant share to a country’s GDP, manufacturers and distributors of farm machinery, seeds, agrichemical products, plants, and products need to be operationally strong within the supply chain. Physical inventory counting, however, remains a time-consuming task and often results in inaccurate information on the farm storage conditions and delays in taking corrective actions.

FarmERP’s inventory management system offers tools to automate manual tasks such as item tracking and counting, report generation, inventory database updating, and restocking. This saves time and effort while reducing the risk of human error.

Real-time Inventory Visibility

For a successful agribusiness, farmers have to constantly review the right products in the right quantities in stock at the right time to determine where they can make inventory adjustments. This results in improved sales management and better relationship with customers.

FarmERP’s inventory management services include real-time updates on farm product status, quantity, location, and movement, which provides expanded inventory visibility and influences informed demand forecasting decisions. To maintain the ideal stock levels that do not burden the agribusiness, the software helps farmers analyse out-of-stock patterns and determine the minimum quantity of farm input that should be available in the inventory.

Detection of Supply Chain Disruptions

Supply chain optimisation is one of the important areas of inventory planning and management. As farms are also located in remote areas away from the middle of densely packed urban areas, farmers need longer time to plan inventory and deliveries in the future.

FarmERP’s farm management software enables real-time monitoring of all farm and warehouse operations. This helps in detecting disruptions, especially in the supply chain, as soon as they happen and taking immediate action. Any disruption pattern can be quickly analysed to identify the bottlenecks and make adjustments in stocking processes. Farmers will have clear visibility of stock movements and quantity enabling efficient management.

Integration of Inventory with Accounts for Accurate Financial Reports

Farm inventory accounting is highly essential for accurate asset management as well as financial reporting. While no agricultural company can stay in business without firm, real-time inventory control, inventory accounting is often a neglected business practice in agriculture.

When it comes to farm inventory, FarmERP allows farmers to view and manage their cost and profit centers effectively. Some of the services include monitoring farm inputs on hand, forecasting margins on growing crops, and knowing when products will be available in high quality for sales and deliveries. It streamlines an integrated inventory and farm accounting process that ensures effective financial reporting and improved profitability.

Farmers worldwide have recognised the role of modern inventory management systems in agriculture in improving their operational efficiency and financial reporting. FarmERP’s inventory management software enables farmers to gain precise insights into the inventory levels, optimise supply chain processes, streamline inventory workflows, and reduce dependence on manual labor. If you need a smart solution for efficient inventory management, contact us today to know how FarmERP can help.