Getting started with FARMIS

Welcome to FARMIS — the Farmers Advisory Resources & Market Information Service for Papua New Guinea. This short tutorial takes you from a fresh phone to a working account with one crop saved to your farm. Plan for about ten minutes.

By the end you will have:

• Installed the FARMIS Android app.
• Created an account with your phone number and a PIN.
• Filled in your profile so advisories match your location and crops.
• Saved a crop to your farm and seen its first piece of advice.

Before you start

You will need:

• An Android phone running a reasonably recent version of Android.
• About 150 MB of free space.
• A working phone number that can receive SMS (you sign in with your number).
• An internet connection for the first-time setup.

FARMIS is currently Android-only. There is no iPhone version yet.

Step 1 — Install the app

The app is distributed as an APK file from the FARMIS download page.

1. On your phone, open the FARMIS download page.
2. Tap the green Download App button. The file (farmis.apk) saves to your Downloads folder.
3. Open the downloaded file. Android will ask if you trust apps from this source — tap Settings, then turn on Allow from this source (sometimes called Install unknown apps). This is a one-time step.
4. Go back to the installer and tap Install. If Google Play Protect shows a warning, tap Install anyway — this is normal for apps installed outside the Play Store.
5. When it finishes, tap Open. The FARMIS icon also appears on your home screen.

Step 2 — Create your account

FARMIS uses your phone number and a PIN. There is no email or password to remember.

1. On the welcome screen, tap Sign up.
2. Enter your phone number in PNG format (for example +675 7XXX XXXX). Double-check it — the verification code goes here.
3. Tap Send code. An SMS with a 4–6 digit one-time code arrives within a minute or two.
4. Type the code into the app.
5. Choose a PIN you can remember but is hard to guess. Avoid 0000, 1234, or your birth year. Re-enter it to confirm.

If the code doesn't arrive, wait about 60 seconds and tap Resend code. Check your signal and that you typed the number correctly.

Step 3 — Fill in your profile

This is the most important step for getting useful advice.

1. Enter your name.
2. Choose your province, district, and nearest market. Market prices and weather will use this.
3. Select the crops you grow or are interested in — staples (sweet potato, taro, cassava, banana, yam), vegetables, or cash crops (coffee, cocoa, vanilla).
4. Tap Finish. You land on the Dashboard.

Step 4 — Save your first crop

Saving a crop tells FARMIS to give you stage-by-stage advice for it — land prep, planting, weeding, fertilising, pest control, harvest.

1. From the Dashboard, tap Crops.
2. Pick a crop you actually grow — for example Sweet potato.
3. On the crop page, tap Add to my farm.
4. Enter the planting date (or planned date) and the area in hectares or square metres.
5. Tap Confirm.

You will see the first stage of advice on the crop page. The same crop now appears as a card on your Dashboard, with reminders as each new stage begins.

You're done

Take a moment to look around:

• Pests & Diseases — search a problem or browse by crop.
• Market Info — daily prices at PNG markets.
• Weather — a 7-day forecast for your location.
• Agri Forum — questions and answers from farmers and experts.

When you're ready for more, see Your first week with FARMIS.