How crop advisories work

A FARMIS crop advisory is a structured set of recommendations for growing a specific crop, broken down by stage. This page explains what's behind it.

The pieces of an advisory

Each crop page is assembled from three sources:

1. The crop reference — planting depths and spacings, climatic requirements, common pests, harvest indicators. This is general agronomic information.
2. Your saved instance — the planting date and area you entered when you tapped Add to my farm. This is what turns general agronomy into a personal schedule.
3. Live context — your location's weather and your nearest market's prices, when they're relevant to a stage.

The app combines them to show, at any moment, the stage you're in and the actions that matter for that stage.

The stages

Most crops follow a similar shape:

1. Land preparation — clearing, tilling, drainage, fertility.
2. Planting — spacing, depth, planting material quality.
3. Establishment — early watering and weeding.
4. Growth — fertilising, pest scouting, training where relevant.
5. Pre-harvest — assessing maturity, anticipating market timing.
6. Harvest and post-harvest — picking, drying, storing, transport.

Crops with specific extras (for example coffee pruning cycles, or cocoa fermentation) include those as additional stages or sub-cards.

How "current stage" is calculated

The app uses your planting date and a standard timeline for the crop and stages. If you planted three weeks ago, the app shows the stage that corresponds to roughly three weeks after planting for that crop.

This is a sensible default, not a guarantee — real farms run faster or slower than the textbook for many reasons. If your crop is clearly ahead of or behind the advisory:

1. Open the saved crop.
2. Edit the planting date to better reflect when growth actually started.
3. The current stage recalculates.

Where the recommendations come from

Recommendations are drawn from agricultural research and extension material relevant to PNG, written and reviewed with input from agronomists. Where multiple options exist (for example, organic vs synthetic pest control), both are shown.

The app is not a real-time agronomist — it can't see your specific plot. Use the advisory as the strong default, and adjust based on what you actually see on your farm. When in doubt, ask the forum.

Why your profile matters

Two pieces of profile data heavily affect what advisories show:

• Location (province / district / nearest market) — drives weather forecasts and which markets are used for prices.
• Crops of interest — drives which crops appear by default in Crops and which problems appear by default in Pests & Diseases.

If those are wrong, the advisories will still be technically correct but less useful. Updating your profile (Profile → Edit profile) is the simplest way to make advisories sharper.