Small-scale growers: what technology do you actually use? There's a gap between 'nothing' and 'enterprise ag software'
Running a 3-acre market garden and I feel like most ag tech content is either written for homesteaders doing everything by feel, or for large commercial operations with precision ag equipment and a data team.
There's not much for the middle: small commercial growers who want to be data-informed but aren't running GPS-guided equipment.
What I actually use and find useful:
- Basic weather apps (useless for frost prediction at field level — learned this the hard way)
- A simple spreadsheet tracking what I planted where and when
- Pest scouting notes (on paper, which is a problem)
What I'd want but can't find:
- Frost risk forecasting calibrated to my actual microsite, not the nearest airport
- Something that tells me the disease pressure window for things like late blight in my specific conditions, not a generic regional calendar
- A planting timing tool that knows I'm in zone 5b in Ontario, not zone 7 in California
Do other small commercial growers have this problem? What are you using? I'm specifically interested in tools that don't require $50K in sensors to get value from.
Posted Feb 25, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC