TL;DR
Decide first: structure by spray/treatment strategy or by profit centre (cost & revenue).
Keep names consistent and make boundaries practical (productive area, shared spaces handled via notes).
Capture variety at the field unit; this is the key filter for treatments, costs, and reports.
Why your field map matters
The map of your fields is the digital model of your farm. It provides the opportunity to start collecting data and information on the field level and, even more importantly, for each variety.
The field unit with its crop category and variety will be the central unit for all data recording, documentation, and reporting. It would help if you kept in mind how you would ideally like to filter, analyze, and report your spray jobs, labor hours, input costs, and revenues.
How we recommend organizing boundaries
That is why we recommend organizing your field boundaries according to:
the main crop treatment strategy, or
cost and revenue allocation strategy
Pick a structure that fits your goals
1) Field structure for planning & documenting spray treatments
You are growing multiple crop categories and varieties on your farm and you want to use Farmable to schedule and document all your spray treatments for your certifications.
Instead of just adopting historical field layouts, follow your farm's variety and crop protection strategy to map the productive areas that need to be treated or are important for cost and revenue tracking. Doing so means that you could divide your fields according to varieties that are treated more or less the same throughout the season. This makes it, for example, even easier to plan, document, and create a report for crop protection.
2)Field structure for cost & revenue tracking
Each field and its crop variety are considered a profit centre on most farms. That means it is important to understand the costs and revenues linked to the field and/or variety to arrive at the profitability of the field unit.
You are growing multiple crop categories and varieties on your farm, and you want to use Farmable in the long term to link your input costs, labour costs and revenues back to the field unit. So that you understand each field's and variety's profitability.
Similar to the previous scenario, you want to think through, how you would normally think about cost and revenue allocation on your farm. Then you can set up your fields in a way so that you can easily record and dive into cost and revenue analysis by profit centre.
FAQs
Should I split by row spacing or rootstock?
Only if it changes treatments, labour, or cost allocation in a way you’ll report on.
What if two small varieties share identical programs and costs?
Keep them together; differentiate via variety split.
Can I restructure later without losing history?
Yes. You can adjust names/boundaries; historic jobs remain tied to the original records.
How granular is too granular?
If a split won’t change a decision or a report, it’s probably unnecessary.