Hackathon Project • Team 6
Farm Operations Center
An AI-powered, full-stack farm management platform built specifically for Kansas agriculture.
Ryan Casey • Eric Moon • Alexiya Moore
Purpose
Agriculture is the backbone of Kansas' economy, and farmers in Ellis County and the surrounding Northwest Kansas region face a unique set of challenges: a semi-arid climate (15–22" annual rainfall), volatile commodity markets, and increasingly complex machinery. Most small and mid-sized farms still juggle weather forecasts, elevator quotes, field planning, service logs, income, and expenses across paper notebooks, text messages, and half a dozen apps.
Farm Operations Center consolidates all of it into one application tuned specifically for Kansas agriculture production, including but not limited to hard red winter wheat, grain sorghum, corn, alfalfa hay, and other farm-specific operations. Every data point is contextualized to the farmer's actual fields, rotation, and finances.
Technical Implementation
Backend
Weather API, live market data, chat bot (Walter), and a local database persisting every entry on the farm.
Frontend
User-friendly display geared specifically for simple navigation and helping farmers manage their operations at a glance.
Why This Project?
Farmers have been farming for years. They're good at what they do. The application manages farmers' operations seamlessly with the integration of AI technology. Risks are calculated, volatility is mitigated, farming becomes a sustainable operation, supporting local economies and bolstering Northwest Kansas's ever-shifting economy.
Dashboard & Features
Dashboard
At-a-glance farm overview with live weather, top crop by acreage, income/expense totals, 7-day forecast, and market snapshot.
Weather
14-day forecast, 8 detailed conditions (humidity, wind, gusts, UV, pressure, cloud cover), 12-hour hourly outlook.
Crop Rotation
Field-level planner with planting/harvest dates, seed rates, expected yields, year-over-year results, and add-rotation form.
Markets
Live futures for wheat, corn, soybeans, sorghum, and alfalfa hay with 30-day sparklines and week/month changes.
Balance Sheet
Income/expense tracking by year with category breakdowns, custom categories, and per-year filtering.
Equipment
Inventory with service records, overdue alerts, and auto-linked expense entries when services are logged.
AI Assistant "Walter"
Natural-language chat with full database access. Ask questions or give commands — Walter can add expenses, log services, or add equipment.
Live Demo
Ready to see it in action? Head back to the dashboard and ask Walter anything.
Go to Dashboard
Ethics & Sustainability
- Sustains farming operations: Helps prevent hundreds of thousands of farm selloffs by giving small and mid-sized operations the tools they need to stay profitable and plan ahead
Innovation & Sustainability
Existing farm management tools (John Deere Operations Center, Climate FieldView, Granular) are tied to specific equipment brands and silo farmer data in proprietary clouds. General tools like QuickBooks ignore agronomic context entirely.
What makes ours different
- Brand agnostic: Works with any equipment, any crop, any field — no vendor lock-in
- Regionally tuned: Built for NW Kansas semi-arid conditions — wheat-sorghum-fallow rotations, hail risk, and pricing basis
- Unified context: Walter sees your weather + finances + equipment + rotation + markets simultaneously — ask "can I afford a new drill?" and he actually can compute it
Future Implementation
Given the 7-hour hackathon constraint, we built the core. With more time, a production version would add:
- Local cash prices: Partner with local co-ops for real-time elevator quotes
- USDA NASS integration: Pull county-level yield averages, commodity credit programs, and crop insurance indemnity data for Ellis County directly
- Precision ag integration: Import yield maps and as-applied data from John Deere Operations Center / Climate FieldView to Walter's context
- Break-even calculator: Per-field profitability projections using actual input costs (seed, fertilizer, fuel, chemicals) and local market prices
- Mobile push alerts: Hail warnings, freeze advisories, and service-due reminders via SMS
- Multi-farm support: Share data across a family operation or co-op with role-based access
- Tax prep export: One-click Schedule F / 1040 export for the accountant
- AI enhancement: "Hey Walter, add 600 gallons of diesel for $2,400" — hands-free while in the combine, plus persistent chat history
- Soil health tracking: Log soil test results per field, track organic matter trends, SOC sequestration for carbon credits
- IoT technology: Soil health sensors and in-field monitoring equipment
- Cattle operation: Add features for managing a cattle operation — herd records, weights, AI/breeding schedules
- Geographic Information System: Mark and annotate important areas of the farm on interactive maps