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Fairport News

Historical FTI news articles and PRESS RELEASES
Download PDF Version of the JUNE 2006 Fairport News - Get PDF Viewer here

JUNE 2006

IN THIS ISSUE

» Welcome
» Rogers Ramblings
» GreenSeeker
» PAM News
» GrapeForecaster News
» Pastures from Space / Pasture Watch News
» Dealer News

» In Closing

 

Welcome

Once again, we welcome our regular readers of Fairport News. The whole Fairport Team extends a warm and grateful welcome to all our new Fairport clients.
The year here in Australia is becoming increasingly concerning. After breaking records during the summer (mildest summer in WA, one of the hottest in the East), we are now breaking records for the longest dry spells in June.
It is amazing to hear how positive people on the land are at these times. We certainly hope your positive attitudes reward you with a fantastic second half of the year.
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Some of you will have already become aware that Colin Booth has joined Fairport. For those of you outside Western Australia, Colin runs a business called Booth Technology which distributes the Fairport suite of software as well as other farm and non-farm software. Booth’s have been the Fairport distributor since 1991. Prior to starting Booth Technology, Colin was second in command to the late Allan Moir at Countrysoft in Perth. Countrysoft was the national distributor of Fairport products from 1989 to 1991.
Colin has joined Fairport as the Marketing Director and the Dealer Manager. He will also be involved in the day to day running of the business and help Fairport’s growth in both the domestic and international markets.
With Colin’s 20 plus years experience in farm software sales and training and in particular his 18 plus years experience as the main Fairport distributor in WA, his inclusion here at Fairport is a huge bonus for us.
Colin’s team at Booth Technology, Stephen, Ben, Sue and Steve will continue to operate that business as usual. Colin will be overseeing that operation and attending strategy meetings on a regular basis.
Colin has already made a trip to NSW to assist Paul Olsen of AgIT at the Cotton Trade Show and to discuss the Greenseeker dealer arrangements with the Crop Optics Greenseeker dealer, Dan Moloney.
I have already taken advantage of Colin’s presence by travelling to South Africa for a week to catch up with the distributors in the northern half of the country (Etienne Nel, Senwes) and appointing a new distributor for the southern half of the country (Rinus Willemse, based in Albertinia). It was also great to catch up with Christo and Roneld Helm. Chisto is the African Manager for KEE Technologies.
I also met up with many of our old and some new clients at the NAMPO Field Days at Bothaville in the Free State. Everyone there seemed to be in a buoyant mood with the expectation of good maize prices for the coming season.

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Once again we can report that interest in the Greenseeker system is strong. Crop optics in NSW have sold another RT200 variable rate system and there have been several sales of the handheld systems to research groups and government departments.
Visit the Fairport web site, Greenseeker page for a list of dealers and product information.

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PAM Enterprise News

Landcorp Farming Limited in New Zealand finally “went live” with PAM Enterprise as promised in the last newsletter. This means that they now have data for their 100 farms being fed into PAM Enterprise on a daily basis.
Work for Landcorp is continuing and we are now focussing our attention on enhancing the IAR (Individual Animal Records) system for their Genetics Units based in Rotorua. Landcorp have over 400,000 individually identified animals and over the next few years hope to increase that number to their cater for their entire herds and flocks. We are looking forward to working with Geoff Nicoll and John Rendel and their team from the Genetics Unit with the challenges ahead.
At this time we have many agribusinesses considering implementing PAM Enterprise and many others considering it as the “way to go” in due course.

PAM Destop Versions News

The following items have been added or fixed in PAM since our last newsletter. :

Data Entry
• Labour Records for Machinery and Manual Tasks: If a Machine or Manual Task Item has been configured as a "Per Item/Piece work" cost type, you can now specify fractional values if required for the "Number of Items" column. Previously you could only enter integer/whole number values.
• Cropping: Data Entry screens for Plans and Recommendations now show title in a different colour to save mistakes.

Configuration
• Machinery and Manual Tasks: Increased Method/Task name field length from 15 to 50 characters.

Inventory
• Stock Take: PAM will now only mark Items as "Totally Consumed" if you specify a zero in the Observed Stock On Hand column. Previously, if an Item's Stock On Hand value was less than or equal to zero, then PAM would mark this Item as "Totally Consumed".
• Stock Take: New option added to display All Inventory Items with a calculated Stock On Hand value. This will allow users to more readily verify Inventory records and Usage records. PAM will now display negative Stock On Hand values. A negative value indicates either incorrect Inventory Purchase / Adjustments records and/or incorrect Usage records. (eg Chemical , Fertiliser, Seeding jobs).

Graphs
• New Irrigation Graphs Added: These graphs list Irrigation records for a selected Season and Area. Available from the Cropped Areas Reports and Graphs menu , the Paddock Reports annd Graphs menu or via the Paddock Budget View Reports menu. The Paddock Budget Irrigation Report also displays Actuals for the selected Area.
• Crop Monitoring Line Graphs: PAM now displays the Growth Stage Guides on the graph if one Test Item is selected.
• Livestock Graphs : Paddock Grazing Histories Graph : Fixed!

Importing
• Mapping: Generic CSV File Import transposing coordinates (Latitude<->Longitude)

Reports
• New Chemical Actives Reports by Crop and Paddock added to Reports / Chemical Reports menu.
• Report Favourites: If you hold down the shift key when selecting the Favourites button in the Report Preview screen, PAM will reset the setting before adding it. No user/visual feedback is given. It is a procedure for cleaning up invalid favourites.
• Inventory Of Consumables: Transactions Report: PAM now displays Location information
• Reports: Livestock Reports: Category Numbers Listing : Overall Totals was not grouping by Category correctly.

Utilities
• Backup and Restore: PAM with Mapping (Non MultiClient) : Users can now restore both their PAM Data and Mapping Data at the same time.

Mapping
• ECW Now supports SUTM# and NUTM# projections
• Fix coordinate error when exporting image from image digitiser
• When importing image from Image digitiser, image didn't always appear in the map.
• Earlier in the year substantial improvements were made to the ESRI SHP file importing system, now catering for polygons with holes in them (donuts)!

Grape Forecaster News

 

A new feature added to Grape Forecaster since our last newsletter…
• A new 'Export' button was added to the Analysis of Predictions Form. It will now save results to a csv file.

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It is pleasing to see many new subscribers have joined the Pastures from Space service this year. Many new features were added to the software and several glitches have been ironed out to make the Pasture Watch experience even better.

We noticed that some new subscribers are using the data for reasons other than Pasture Growth Rate. One subscribers is using it to monitor progress of growth in wheat crops and another is using it to monitoring progress in land rehabilitation areas.
Work is being done in eastern Australia to improve the quality of the Pasture Growth Rate data. This augers well for getting more subscribers from that side of Australia on board in future years.

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AG-IT – NSW & QLD
Ag IT is relocating to Brisbane as of the 1st of July. This is a short distance from our current location, so will have little impact on business.
As the only phone number to change will be the land line, all support members and potential clients can still use 1800 658 998.
The new land line number will sent out in this months Help note email.

Beef 2006 was huge. Although Ag IT was tucked away with MKL Rural there were still quite a few growers who found us and showed great interest in the software and Livestock and NLIS capabilities of PAM. Thank you to all who showed interest at Beef 2006. Thanks also to those who attended the Australian Cotton Trade show and dropped in to the Ag IT PAM QA Plus stand.

Paul will be doing his Cert IV in Work Place Training and Assessment in Late May and Early August so that training can be carried out for the PAM software under the FarmBis scheme in Queensland. We hope to have FarmBis approval for this by the end of August. Those interested in training in Queensland, please either contact Paul or fill out the training form on the web site (www.agit.com.au).

Don’t forget that the online PAM Backup Data Warehouse service is FREE for support members, so take advantage at
www.agit.com.au/warehouse

All the best for your winter season.

Paul Olsen
Ag IT
2-8 Serengetti Drive
MUNRUBEN QLD 4125
M: 0419 727 086
Sales & Support: 1800 658 998
email: paul@agit.com.au

SA, VIC, TAS and Southern
NSW Distributors:
FarmTek Australia VIC
Joanne has been very busy with her large territory to look after. Recently she attended the Agfest Field Days in Tasmaina and caught up with many clients.
Recently Joanne has been to South Australia and southern New South Wales for a training run and is always keen to hear from clients wanting her training services.
Please log on to www.farmetk.com.au to request training.
Joanne can also be contacted via one of the following:
M: 0429 930 770
O: 1300 553 446
F: 03 57951015
Email:Joanne@farmtek.com.au

Maelroan Computers WA
Hello everyone. The season has not being very kind so far in most of the state. In our travels this past month, the only good looking area is Esperance. It is hoped that the front promised will pass inland with much needed rain (not showers).

In July we will be travelling from the west coast through to Esperance. The route has not been finalised yet, so if you are looking for training during this time, please call or email for a booking. August will be filling in the gaps after the end of financial year training. Newdegate and Mingenew are the two field days we are attending in September. If you want to make training bookings for then, please do so, as it is easier to take you out of the list, than to add you in.

We keep a basic guide of where we should be on our web site.

Remember, as a registered Farmbis trainer, eligible farmers can apply to receive 50% rebate on registered courses, either individually or in groups.

Let’s hope the rest of the season makes up for the dismal start.

Cheers

Liz Alford
Maelroan Computers
Maelroan@bigpond.com
www.Maelroan.com.au
0428 910 122

VIC – Wimmera Districts

The season looks like it might be a bit of a roller coaster ride this year, so we might have to hang on to our seats. With April providing us with the best break in years, everyone has gone in to the sowing program with some confidence for a change. But with virtually no rain since, and new records set for the number of frosts and minimum temperatures, we are all starting to scratch our heads again. With it being so cold in the mornings, it at least gives us an excuse to stay in the office by the heater and get our PAM records up to date..! Joanne and myself, will once again be at the Mallee Machinery Field Days on August 2nd & 3rd at Speed, so drop in for a chat and a cuppa, and if you have any queries or issues with your software, we will do our best to help you out.
Paul Drendel
DrenKo Pty Ltd
Business Software Solutions
13 Darlot Street
Horsham, VIC, 3400

P: 0427-373 656
F: 03-5384 7239

Certified MYOB Consultant
Certified Fairport Farm Software Professional

WA Distributors:
Booth Technology

We will be running training courses as usual every 3rd Thursday and Friday of the month, contact our office for details if you have not received details already.

Voyager Estate and Churchview Estate have recently been installed with PAM Ausvit this brings the number of vineyards in WA using PAM Ausvit to 70!!

Greenseeker interest is taking off with people seeing the potential of using this new technology.

If you require any training on farm or in our office please do not hesitate to contact us.

Contact Details:

Stephen and Ben
T: 08 9383 4443
E: sales @ boothtech.com.au
www.boothtech.com.au

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The Fairport Team wishes all our clients well for the winter ahead.
Until September 2006 … Farewell from Roger Wiese and the Fairport Team