Quarto helps modernise Malaysian agriculture
To strengthen the Malaysian agriculture industry, the government is embarked on a modernisation programme. This means using smart farming techniques and technologies that can improve harvests. At the same time, modernising agriculture can attract more young people to participate.
The COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns over global food security. In the face of lockdowns and safety restrictions, agriculture players are turning to technology to mitigate productivity loss and improve workflows. This is especially important for SMEs, which are more vulnerable to the pandemic and market shifts.
The need for greater crop diversity
At the same time, experts advocate for Malaysia to diversify its crop variety beyond rice and oil palm. Over the past 20 years, daily rice intake for average Malaysians had fallen by 25%. Changing diet preferences and spending practices are now raising demands for other high quality food crops to supplement rice. Malaysia is in a unique position to export specialty local products, but currently lacks industry players. In order to facilitate more SME participation into agriculture, policies must change.
Using technology to transform agriculture practices
Already farms and estates are using drone technology to carry out spraying duties. At the same time, drones let farmers easily surveil, map and monitor their farms, all from the convenience of a tablet or smartphone.
Technology isn’t only in hardware, but also software. Farm and estate managers are turning to software solutions to digitalise their business to manage operations better. Instead of recording into logbooks, managers discovered that recording data digitally into management systems like Quarto by LintraMax offers many benefits.
A system like Quarto keeps track of every possible cost and expenditure, every task to do or already done, and the status of every worker and crop harvest. For example, a field supervisor can track whether crops need watering or manuring through the work manifest, or whether a tractor needs maintenance without going through numerous logbooks to find one specific record.
Month end is often busy because of payroll calculations on top of everyday operations. Quarto can automatically calculate them and prepare for month end accounts closing. On top of that, it can also record crop harvests and sales, or vehicle and equipment maintenance, along with other operational expenses.
Furthermore, Quarto’s integrated functions mean data from separate modules such as payroll, inventory and procurement, operating expenses, or crop harvests and sales reflect in the financial module without needing user intervention.
Making remote working and decision making productive
Quarto’s cloud-based architecture lets field supervisors submit daily work data and raise up potential issues from their smartphone. This goes beyond simply allowing upper management to monitor operations from a smart device. It also lets management respond to approvals, even multi-tiered ones, and respond directly to on-site managers. Quarto is an effective solution to maintain productivity and top-down communication even during lockdown where site visits are impossible.
Want to know how Quarto can benefit your agriculture business? Schedule a free consultation with us now!
