Introduction
Technology has seeped into every domain. The fields of education, transportation, entertainment, and farming have become more promising when combined with technology and mobile apps. Thanks to various mobile news apps and technological advancements, one quickly learns about the developments on the other side of the globe.
The world of farming is not alien to these advancements in technology. Today, one can see farmers employ agriculture apps to streamline their activities and ensure that their harvest is in a good state. Agriculture apps help farmers monitor vital indicators related to crop cultivation and animal nurturing that alleviate crop damage. Farmers can fix several crop issues by inserting IoT, AI-based features, and leveraging cameras and GPS.
Furthermore, agriculture apps provide farmers with timely and accurate information and advisory on crop production, livestock rearing, and other allied activities.
Thus, it has become essential to carefully determine the elements and functions of your agriculture apps before you roll out one. It is crucial because if your agriculture apps do not live up to farmers' expectations, your apps will soon fade into oblivion.
To avoid such a situation, read on to know how to develop agriculture apps in 2022.
Summary
Numerous agriculture apps are on the market for solving various problems of farmers. It has become necessary to do your homework to roll out agriculture apps that will not fade into oblivion. It also means that you need to focus more on agriculture app development and take everything seriously. Thus, to ensure your agriculture apps offer something to farmers, you need to adopt the agriculture app development process prevalent in 2022. This blog deals with this subject, so stick around to know more. 1. Agriculture App Development: Features To Include - GPS and location-based services - Integration with drones - Chat - Broadcasting and video calls - Camera and machine vision - Calendar - Push notifications - Weather forecast - Listings of agricultural goods - Payment gateway - Analytics 2. Agriculture App Development: Steps To Creating Agriculture Apps Stage 1: Ideation Stage 2: Business Analysis and Technical Specification Stage 3: Pre-development Stage Stage 4: Development and Testing Stage 5: Deployment Stage 6: Maintenance and Support 3. Agriculture App Development: Software Development Approach - Develop native apps instead of cross-platform apps for better performance, user experience, and security. - Some development companies might shy away from using large data centers. They can go for a cloud computing platform instead. - Create your APIs instead of using third-party APIs to reduce external dependencies.
Agriculture App Development: Features To Include
The features to include in your agriculture apps depend on the type of app you intend to develop. You can always create an MVP and keep on adding new features after observing the changing needs and demands of your target audience. Here is a list of popular features that farmers look for in agriculture apps.
GPS and location-based services
Agriculture apps are dud without GPS and location-based services, as mapping is crucial for farmers. Mapping enables farmers to use tracking drone investigations and see local weather forecasts.
Besides weather forecast acquisition, farmers use agriculture apps to divide their fields into polygons to investigate them separately and pin locations needing extra attention. It is possible by including a location-based service in your agriculture apps.
Maps also allow farmers to locate their specialty crops, pesticide applicators, etc.
Integration with drones
Your agriculture apps should integrate with drones as drones let farmers see which areas their crops are healthy and weak. This information helps farmers make required adjustments however the situation demands.
Also, a thermal camera on drones is beneficial for farmers. It helps them detect water leakage and determine how much water each crop should get. Furthermore, drones are a great way of spreading pesticides and delivering soil samples to fellow farmers anywhere.
However, some government restrictions on drones and farmers need to see mandates prevalent in their regions.
Chat
Some farmers might need assistance while transitioning from traditional to more digital-oriented farming. Thus, agriculture apps should have the facility to chat with experts and advisors to help farmers learn how to use new technologies.
Broadcasting and video calls
Agriculture apps that focus on advising farmers on various farming-related tasks need to include video streaming and broadcasting feature.
This feature makes it easy for farmers to join live sessions and obtain their answers to various questions.
Also, with the broadcasting feature, a farmer can impart his experience and valuable tips to his contemporaries.
Camera and machine vision
Agriculture apps should also include visual information and machine learning. This inclusion helps farmers recognize plant diseases, identify weeds, gauge nitrogen levels, and estimate leaf damage.
Several open-source libraries for machine vision are present, so choose the one your agriculture apps need.
To use machine learning properly, you must leverage available databases of plants, their diseases, etc. Your developers should combine them with a cloud-based approach to develop excellent agriculture apps.
Calendar
If your agriculture apps are for managing crops, a calendar is essential as it helps farmers schedule their farming activities.
Push notifications
Push Notifications in agriculture apps let farmers keep track of activities demanding more attention from them. They also warn them about any new alterations, emergencies, or data.
You can also provide farmers with more information by including pictures and maps in your reminders; you need to use rich push notifications.
Weather forecast
Agriculture apps should include the weather forecast feature to provide farmers with weather updates every hour. The weather forecast is essential because it is crucial in growing crops.
Listings of agricultural goods
The agriculture apps that act as marketplaces for farming-related goods like pesticides, seeds, and equipment should have the listing feature. This feature helps bring together consumers, dealers, and producers, enabling farmers to find the best deals.
The agriculture apps designed for this should have photos and descriptions for each product. Also, your app should display their delivery time to equip farmers with everything they should know about their products.
Payment gateway
If your agriculture apps act as marketplaces for farmers, they should contain a mobile banking feature. Therefore, integrate a payment gateway for fast and easy payments if your agriculture apps are concerned with this task.
Analytics
If your agriculture apps promise to help farmers with work processes, you will need to integrate analytics into them. Your analytics should give insights into resources, crop health, changes in weather conditions, etc.
Besides helping farmers, you can also include analytics that helps you know how your agriculture apps fare. You can learn how many people use your app, how much time they spend, and what features they use most. This information can help you alter it according to market needs.
Agriculture App Development: Steps To Creating Agriculture Apps
Stage 1: Ideation
The first step to creating agriculture apps is Ideation, where you dig out answers to various questions. The questions can be about how you intend your agriculture apps to help your farmers and which region, country, or area you want to target.
Moreover, consider the following questions while working on your idea.
- Which platform does your target section use the most?
- Are there agriculture apps that solve the same problem, and how will your agriculture apps generate revenue?
Stage 2: Business Analysis and Technical Specification
The second step involved in agriculture app development is clarifying earlier questions. This step guides your business analysts and makes them develop an accurate blueprint for your project. Your blueprint should comprise your agriculture apps' functional (technical) and non-functional specifications. Besides it, you need to map the user journey to form a full project requirements document.
This document is essential because it acts as instructions, instructing developers and keeping everyone involved on the same page. The requirements document monitors agriculture apps' features, development team, deadlines, prices, etc.
Stage 3: Pre-development Stage
In the third stage, the developers of agriculture apps are supposed to set out the required back-end APIs, third-party services, cloud storage, and other app architecture-based aspects of the development process.
On the other hand, designers start plotting features, icons, buttons, etc., by developing wireframes and later prototypes.
Developers should be careful at this stage and focus on creating a scalable foundation that they can mold as per plans.
Stage 4: Development and Testing
The Native, Cross-platform, and Hybrid app development methods demand different technologies and tools.
The app requirement document you have made earlier works as a checklist, helping developers not leave anything during the development.
The app requirements document works like a checklist that helps developers not leave out anything during the development.
At the same time, the quality assurance team proceeds with its module testing at the developers' end of each module development.
This type of testing provides parallel testing support to app development and helps with complexity testing.
Stage 5: Deployment
After successful development and testing, your agriculture apps are ready to roll out with cross-checking that the end-product meets all the requirements. At last, you need to ascertain there is nothing that could not be in alignment with the Play Store or App Store guidelines.
Once your agriculture apps are live on the targeted platforms, you must market them digitally using analytical tools. Increasing the number of downloads may take considerable time, but you have to be constant with your quality services.
Stage 6: Maintenance and Support
The last stage of your agriculture app development is Maintenance and Support, which lasts indefinitely. Keep your agriculture apps updated with emerging technologies in agriculture and mobile devices. You might ask why it is crucial to maintain your agriculture apps. The answer is to ensure that your apps perform well and cut out any malfunction.
Also, you need to add enhanced features to attract new users and gain a competitive advantage by incorporating IoT-based features and cloud-based data services.
Agriculture App Development: Software Development Approach
- It would be nice to develop native agriculture apps instead of cross-platform ones. The reason is that the former uses mobile devices' hardware to a maximum extent. Native apps offer enhanced user experience and better performance and security than cross-platform apps. These things matter a lot to farmers who are new to using agriculture apps and technology.
- Some development companies might shy away from using large data centers. They can go for a cloud computing platform instead.
- It is not like you should not use third-party APIs, but you need to avoid them for the core features of your agriculture apps. Too many third-party APIs create external dependencies. Therefore, you should make your APIs for the core features of your agriculture apps.
- A mobile device lab on the cloud comes in handy to ensure that your agriculture apps work on every platform. Thus, using one will help you check whether your agriculture apps work on various models and versions of iPhones and iPads. It also helps with the Android platform as there are numerous Android manufacturers.
Agriculture App Development: Project Plan
One needs a thorough project plan covering the following:
- One should make plans for the MVP and its subsequent iterations.
- One should layout tasks, dependencies, schedules, and budgets.
- One needs to specify one's quality standards, metrics, and measurements.
- Your project plan should cover risk management, communications management, human resource management, stakeholder management, etc.
Conclusion
India used to generate most of its GDP share from agriculture alone. The GDP share has decreased, but this field still has a lot of promise and potential for innovation. With a mobile app, you can change the whole scenario and may even bring a revolution to agriculture.
One Last Word of Advice:
It would be best to choose your technology stack with great care and consideration. It will directly affect the front-end, the back-end of the web, and mobile app development.
Also, including IoT, Machine Learning, Machine Vision, and Artificial Intelligence in your agriculture apps improve your apps. They have more chances of performing better than their rivals.
If you want to develop the best agriculture apps for helping farmers and easing their tasks, contact AppsRhino for the best outcome!
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