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Fairport News

Historical FTI news articles and PRESS RELEASES
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December 2009

IN THIS ISSUE

» Welcome
» Roger's Ramblings
» New in PAM
» Tips and Tricks
» Dealer News
    » AgIT
    » Booth Technologies
    » FarmTek Australia
» In Closing

Once again the Fairport team welcomes all our new clients who have joined us in the last three months. Please remember, we are always happy to get feedback from our clients, old and new. So, if you have something that we should know about our service or products, please don’t hesitate to tell us.

Season’s Greetings from all of us at Fairport. We hope you all have a happy and peaceful Christmas and that 2010 brings you great joy.

Christmas Hours: Please note that our office will be open over the holiday season but only light on staff. Voice and fax messages, along with messages to the support email will be checked regularly and responded to as soon as possible.

This marks the end of Fairport's 21st year. It was a challenging and gruelling year in some ways and a roller coaster of a year in many ways. Thank you very much for all your ongoing support … some of you for those entire 21 years.

I would like to thank the long suffering, overworked Fairport staff for putting in such a great effort all year. It is the first Christmas in a long time where I have felt that I can relax a little. Usually at this time we are half way through something major and I am wishing Christmas would hold off for a while, but this year we're ready for it!

There have been no changes to the make-up of the Fairport team in six months. There has been some travelling going on, however. Mikhail went back to Russia for a stint and came back refreshed and full of enthusiasm to continue his wonderful work in the world of precision data processing. Allison took a long break during October and November, returning to Canada where she spent much of her youth. It sounded like she did lots of partying. Pushpa left for India at the beginning of December for a long holiday (although she was convinced it was going to be anything but a holiday) to catch up with their relatives. She is due back early January. William is going to Mauritius for January to reconnect with his grandparents, Ben and his wife Natasha have left for a couple of weeks in Thailand and my wife, Marina and I are getting excited about our three weeks in Europe, starting out on Boxing day.

As I write this, Colin is in Sydney or Albury setting up the guys at Macquarie Agriculture with their newly acquired PAM Enterprise system that will be used across their grape, horticulture and dairy enterprises. In due course they intend to roll it out in Brazil where they will be farming mainly soya beans. Colin barely touched the ground after returning from an arduous and chilly two weeks visiting vineyards, potato farms and apple orchards in the far North West section of USA. He had Henry, our Business Development Manager in USA with him. Henry has just served his first six months and has traversed the country diagonally and north-south several times over during this time. Henry has lots of irons in the fire over there and we are expecting some big things in 2010, starting out in January with an installation of a PAM Enterprise system at Mission Hill Wines in Canada.

I wish you all a safe and peaceful Christmas and an exceedingly successful 2010.

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Our PAM users can expect to see some new features in the next release, which should have been released by the time you are reading this. Allison has been busy writing help notes that will be available in PDF format on our web site for these new features.

In brief, here are some of the new features you can expect:

• Comprehensive daily weather data: A long awaited feature which enables you to record minimum and maximum humidity and temperature along with your daily rainfall. This is an optional feature – go to the Configuration/Customise your PAM … section of PAM to switch this on.
• Simplified inventory tracking: We have now set up options in PAM that will enable you to do your tracking of inventory without requiring tracking by batch number and/or location. You can still enter (manually, rather by using a pick list) your batch numbers so reporting by batch number still works – go to the Configuration/Customise your PAM … section of PAM to switch off inventory tracking by batch number (and location if required)
• Chemical spraying conditions: A new data value, “Delta T”, can now be recorded along with wind speed and direction etc. To quote the Bureau of Meteorology… “Delta T is used by the agricultural industry. It is an important indicator for acceptable spraying conditions. It is indicative of evaporation rate and droplet lifetime.”
• General overheads: PAM now has a place to record all those overheads that you incur, like machinery maintenance costs, rates, borrowing costs, preparing firebreaks … you can probably think of lots more. These overheads are recorded in the Paddock Activities Dairy like any paddock-type job. At report time you can choose to allocate these overheads across all paddocks on a per-hectare basis, or report on your overheads independently. This is a very powerful new feature.
• Irrigation by selecting valves (PAM AusVit and PAM UltraCrop Only): You use this feature by first setting up a list of your valves and assigning the blocks to those valves. Then at data entry time, you choose the valves that you were using and PAM automatically knows which blocks were being watered – go to the Configuration/Customise your PAM … section of PAM to switch this on.
• Enhanced seed treatment recording: This feature will be coming out sometime in late January. I apologise to those who have been requesting this feature now for several years. It has taken quite a bit of time and effort to get this done. As you record a planting event, you can record one or more seed treatments on the crop details page of the “Add Wizard”. The rates of application are in Quantities per 1 or 1000 Kg.
• Seed requirements calculator: This feature will be coming out sometime in late January. Again as you record a planting event, you can enter in certain details about the seed (percentage germination, percentage field loss, seed weight, required seed density) and PAM will calculate the required Kg/Ha for you.

We have some excellent software enhancement ideas in the pipeline for 2010 and we are looking forward to having these ready for you throughout the year.

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Not only will the new help notes be online, but there are several already available covering a variety of topics. Have you wondered how to handle special harvest units? Worm Egg Counts? Importing CBH LoadNet Harvest Data? Or even just wanted to look at the full manual…

Check out our help files page for a full listing: http://fairport.com.au/help/default.asp.

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AgIT - NSW & QLD

We would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have supported Ag IT in 2009. It has been great to work with you and we certainly do hope that we have provided a worthwhile service to you all.

AG IT will be running training courses in and around Dubbo and Young in early February 2010. All training courses are approved by FarmReady, so please look out for the emails with more information on these training sessions.

AG IT will be on light staff for the Christmas/New Year period but we will still be available. So if you need support, please leave a message or email us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

All the best for 2010 and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Paul Olsen
Ag IT | Agricultural Information Systems & Training
Ph/Fax: (07) 3802 1458 | Mobile: 0419 727 086
Email: paul@agit.com.au | Web: www.agit.com.au

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Booth Technology - WA

We will be open through the Christmas period and closed from 7 January till 18 January. I can be contacted by txt message 0412360608 or email while away.

Online shop is up and running at www.cnis.com.au. There are over 30,000 products available from hardware, software, consumables including cameras to playstations. Order your consumables for printers like toners and in cartridges online and have them freighted directly to you.

Register online and make an order and be in the running to win 1 of 50 Internet Security packages RRP$110.00

I was asked about 1300 number for support calls, as it's a STD for some clients to call us and many support calls can be quite long, please txt me, email me or call and request to call you back if that's the case.

For all those who have been unable to keep their PAM records/maps up to date, we will be providing a service next year to help you get your records/maps tidied up. Please register interest don@boothtech.com.au

We have registered for Wagin Woolorama, hope to catch up with you there.

Season's Greetings and all the very best for 2010. Please click here to view a PDF of the Booth Technology Christmas Message.

Don Silva
Booth Technology
Phone: 08 93988707
Email: don@boothtech.com.au

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FarmTek Australia VIC - SA - TAS

We wish all our clients a great Christmas and thank you all for your support throughout 2009.

We spent a busy time October and November running Training throughout SA and Tasmania. Now that we have training registered with FarmReady it is a great opportunity to upgrade your PAM skills.

I plan to be in Southern Riverina in Mid January and back in SA early February so keep you emails coming if you are interested in some dedicated PAM training.

Please use the online training request (http://www.fairport.com.au/forms/training.asp) to register your interest, or contact me via email: Joanne@farmtek.com.au, if you would like any further information on the PAM training.

All the best for Christmas and I look forward to meeting with you in the New Year.

Joanne Richardson
FarmTek Australia
Ph 0429930770
Email: Joanne@farmtek.com.au

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Message of the month:

A little boy returned from Sunday School with a new perspective on the Christmas story. He had learned all about the Wise Men from the East who brought gifts to the Baby Jesus. He was so excited he just had to tell his parents: "I learned in Sunday School today all about the very first Christmas! There wasn't a Santa Claus way back then, so these three skinny guys on camels had to deliver all the presents!" And Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with his nose so bright wasn't there yet, so they had to have this big spotlight in the sky to find their way around."

Until March … Farewell from the Fairport Team