Glossary
The terms the comparison uses, defined plainly. Alphabetical.
- Acts on your records
- The site's term for an AI assistant the vendor describes as reading or writing the farm's own fields, books or contracts, rather than answering from general knowledge.
- Ag Data Transparent (ADT)
- A voluntary certification run by the Ag Data Transparent organization, a nonprofit. A vendor that passes has answered a standard set of questions about data ownership, use and sharing and had the answers checked against its contracts. The site notes ADT certification where a vendor lists it; the vendor's own policy still governs.
- API
- Application programming interface: the published way one program hands data to another without a person exporting and importing files. A vendor that offers one lets other tools connect; "API partner" on a product page means the vendor names that partner.
- As-applied data
- The record a planter, sprayer or spreader writes as it works: what was applied, where, at what rate. It flows from the machine to an equipment platform and from there, if connected, to farm-management software.
- Basis
- The difference between a local cash bid and the futures price for the same commodity and delivery month. A grain-marketing tool that shows basis history is showing you how your local buyers have priced against the board over time.
- Cash bid
- The price a specific buyer (elevator, processor, ethanol plant) is offering today for grain delivered at a stated time. Bids are local; a tool that shows them by ZIP code is pulling from buyers near you.
- CLU (Common Land Unit)
- The USDA Farm Service Agency's field boundary, used for farm program reporting. Several products import CLU boundaries as a starting point for field maps.
- Elevator-side grower app
- An app a grain buyer licenses from a software company and gives to its customers under the buyer's own name, for scale tickets, contracts, e-sign and payments. You use whichever one your buyer chose.
- Enterprise (accounting sense)
- A profit center inside the farm: corn, soybeans, custom work, a landlord arrangement. Enterprise accounting assigns income and cost to each so you can see which parts of the operation make money.
- Field-level profitability
- Revenue minus cost for one field, which requires that both the yield record and the input and machine costs are tied to that field. "Sub-field" profitability does the same for zones within a field.
- Free tier
- A version of a paid product that costs nothing but is capped: a limit on fields, records, questions or users. The site records the caps where the vendor publishes them.
- Free with equipment
- A platform included with a machine purchase. The cost is in the machine; the maker funds the software to keep the machine data in its ecosystem.
- Generic assistant
- An AI feature that answers questions in natural language but does not read or write your own records. Functionally similar to a public chatbot inside the product.
- NDVI
- Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, a value computed from satellite or drone imagery that correlates with green plant material. Used to see variation within a field during the season; it is not a yield measurement.
- Per-acre pricing
- A subscription that scales with the acres you enroll. Common in agronomy and imagery products; some management products include a block of acres and charge per acre above it.
- Scale ticket
- The weight record a buyer issues when a load is delivered, with gross, tare, net, moisture and grade. Capturing tickets automatically is the main reason to connect farm software to a buyer's app.
- Schedule F
- The IRS form on which a sole-proprietor farm reports profit or loss. Farm accounting products that map their accounts to Schedule F lines make tax preparation faster.
- SSURGO
- The USDA soil survey database. Products that show soil types under a field boundary are usually drawing from it.
- Telematics
- The hardware and service that lets a machine report its position, status and data over a cellular connection. Equipment makers bundle a period of it with new machines; older machines may need a one-time activation.
- White-label
- Software sold by one company but shown to users under another company's name. Most elevator and retailer grower apps are white-labeled.
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