How to Create an Agriculture App? Features, Steps, and Cost

Discover how to build an agriculture app that transforms farming! Dive into essential features, a clear step-by-step process, and cost estimates to build a powerful tool for farmers and agribusiness professionals.

Updated 9 October 2024

Auresh Saxena
Auresh Saxena

VP - Backend Technology at Appventurez

Agriculture has been a significant industry worldwide since the beginning. Due to advanced technology, it has seen numerous development stages and is still evolving with new innovations and creations. Modern farming is the latest trend in which business opportunities are growing.

Entrepreneurs are recognizing the risks involved in the farming process and are coming up with unique solutions. The demand for agriculture is increasing with the passing days due to the rise in population, diet changes, and urbanization. Many startups are considering entering agribusiness for the vast opportunities and creating unique digital solutions.

A study conducted by Statista shows that the gross production value in the agricultural sector is projected to be US $4.59 tn in 2024 and could grow to US $ 5.52 tn by 2029.

Statista market insights

Agriculture is a vast and complex sector that includes crop and livestock production. Numerous factors are incorporated into the production procedure, such as seed selection, cattle, poultry, weather conditions, soil fertility, etc. Creating an agriculture app ensures easy operations in agribusiness and provides predictive analysis as per the requirement.

This blog provides insights on agriculture app development, why it is essential for agribusiness and farmers, how to start the application development process, and the cost involved.

What is Agriculture App Development?

Agriculture app development refers to the development of mobile or web applications tailored to the needs of farmers and agribusiness personnel. These applications offer a range of functionalities for managing farms, monitoring weather conditions, improving production, market analysis, and optimizing supply chains.

It helps farmers be informed about the crucial factors of farming, from soil health to weather reports, and it also bridges the gap between farmers and buyers by providing a channel for accessible communication.

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Why is App Development important in Agriculture?

App development in agriculture plays a pivotal role in addressing the growing challenges of climate change, resource management, and scarcity. The following are the key points why agriculture app development is important:

  • Better Decision Making: An application prompts farmers to provide real-time data regarding crops and livestock, which helps optimize crop yields, reduce the wastage of resources, and improve decision-making.
  • Improved Efficiency: An application can automate numerous tasks, make monitoring crop health convenient, and provide future trend analysis. This saves farmers time and effort and improves efficiency.
  • Sustainability: Resource utilization becomes convenient with the help of a suitable application, reducing water consumption, pesticides, and fertilizer waste. This sustains the agriculture process.
  • Accessibility: An application connects different sources with the farmer, making the market accessible for all. Financial services and expert guidance can then be seamlessly accessed on mobile phones.
  • Collaboration: An application facilitates collaboration between farmers, suppliers, and buyers and makes partnerships smoother.

Types of Agriculture Application

Several types of agriculture applications are available that are tailored to the different needs and challenges in this sector. Below, you can find briefs on some of the main types of agriculture applications.

Types of Agriculture application

  • Weather Forecasting

One of the critical factors in the agricultural sector is the weather. Farmers require weather forecasts to pre-plan plantation, irrigation, and harvesting activities to ensure that unsuitable weather conditions do not damage their crops.

Therefore, weather forecasting apps have been introduced in the agricultural industry. These apps give prediction analysis on temperature, humidity, rain, and wind. With this kind of application, farmers can effectively plan their fieldwork based on weather predictions.

  • Cattle Management

Cattle is one of the assets in the agriculture industry, and it is quite challenging for ranchers and farmers to manage them. The cattle management application helps to track down cattle with the help of GPS collars. Additionally, the application helps users track cattle feeding and control breeding schedules.

  • Agriculture Planning and Mapping

Various planning and mapping activities are involved in the agricultural industry, and the right tools and features can streamline this process and help farmers better organize their assets and resources.

An agriculture planning and mapping application allows farmers to monitor crop development, animals, and weather. This ensures better planning of the activities to take place in the farming.

  • Monitor Grain Elevators

The grain elevator app offers the tools to manage grain inventories and monitor real-time market pricing on digital devices. Additionally, the application is suitable for handling the necessary contacts, purchasing grains, and tracking the delivery status.

  • GPS Tracking

GPS tracking applications in the agricultural sector help track and monitor the location of vehicles, farm equipment, and even animals. This application can help farm managers monitor the involvement of farming assets and manage them better. Tracking the logistics also becomes seamless with GPS tracking.

A geolocation app development has become a necessity in the market, and it includes numerous factors. You must learn everything about geo-location app development to ensure which features are essential, what technologies to use, and other important things for creating an application.

  • Marketplace App for Agriculture

Agribusiness involves buying and selling seeds, crops, animals, and other things that require connection with the market. The marketplace app is one place for the people involved in this sector to connect with the right source for selling and buying products.

The online application resolves the issue of physically approaching the market and gives a platform to make connections and do business without hassle.

Must-have Features in Agriculture App Development

A farming app should address all the requirements of the farmers and other associated partners to streamline the process. The main features one must include when building an agricultural application are outlined below.

Features of agriculture app

  • User-friendly Interface

It is necessary to understand that agriculture and farming applications will be used by many farmers, farm managers, product sellers, and purchasers. So, keeping this in mind, making a complex user interface is a bad idea. The application should include a simple, intuitive interface that everyone can easily access.

Also Read: Why Does Your Business Need To Focus On User Experience & Customer Experience Harmonically?

  • Weather Updates

Weather is a foremost concern for getting good production in the agriculture sector. Farmers must have daily updates regarding the weather conditions so that they can appropriately schedule the plantings, irrigation, and harvesting. Therefore, weather updates are the key feature of a farming application.

  • GPS Tracking and Geo Location

One of the essential features of modern farming includes GPS and geolocation. This feature allows farmers to track the exact location of the crops, monitor field boundaries, and manage the available resources. For example, farmers can monitor the growth of crops with the help of GPS tracking. Additionally, geolocation allows farmers to plan crop rotation and improve farm management.

  • Offline Mode

Having a strong connection is not possible for the farmers, as they need to work in some areas with limited internet connection for different farming activities. Therefore, the application must support offline mode on which farmers can rely. It should store the data that can be accessed offline.

Moreover, if a user feeds data without an internet connection at a time, it should be synced automatically with the system that connects with the internet. This will allow the data and analysis to be saved so that users can make predictions regarding various activities and management.

  • Data Analytics & Reporting

Modern farming is becoming more focused on data and reports of the farm. Decision-making gets easier with the close analysis of data analytics and reports, which are generated with the help of drones, weather sensors, soil tests, and field observation.

The application should have a feature that collects all the necessary data and makes an analysis for the users to view to make a fair decision.

  • Pest and Disease Alert

Pests and crop diseases are among the major causes of crop damage, and to prevent it, farmers must detect any harm at an early stage. Nowadays, AI and machine learning are utilized in agriculture applications to identify potential diseases. This identification has been made possible by analyzing sensor images and crop data.

The application must alert users of pest and disease threats and take important measures to avoid the worst circumstances.

  • Crops & Agricultural Goods Listing

A marketplace app provides a platform for farmers to list their crops and other agricultural products for sale. This will help them connect with the buyers directly and will create transparency in the deals. Along with that, farmers can navigate products they would like to buy, such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, or any farming equipment.

  • Market Price Updates

Price fluctuation is a very common measure in the farming sector, which sometimes leads to less profitability for the farmers. Therefore, an application should include the market price update feature to notify the users when the price goes down or up. An app offering real-time price updates regarding crops can help farmers maximize profits and reduce the cost of involving a middleman.

  • Multi-Language Support

One of the common limitations of agriculture applications is the language. Farmers come from diverse backgrounds and understand specific languages, which makes multiple language support essential for the application made for them. When farmers from any region are able to navigate the application without the language barrier, they will adopt it for day-to-day use more quickly.

  • Push Notifications

Adding the push notification feature to the farming application will ensure real-time engagement. The notifications can be weather updates, pest or disease alerts, irrigation and harvesting reminders, or price fluctuations at the marketplace. However, for the user’s suitability, they must be able to customize the notification types on the app.

Steps for Agriculture App Development

As of now, you have a good understanding of why it is vital to build an application that caters to the needs of the agricultural sector, along with the key features to include. The following section explains the steps for the development of the agriculture app.

Steps for developing agriculture app

  • Market research and identify the target audience

The application development starts with conducting deep market research. This first step helps identify the core measures for the application’s success, such as the issues we are resolving with the digital solution, the target audience, and the required functions and features.

The market research will include the following:

  1. Identify User Needs: An agriculture application has a diverse range of users, including farmers, buyers, and sellers. Therefore, it is important to determine the needs of each group of users and build an app that provides them with solutions. For instance, small-scale farmers need to focus on weather and crop health updates, whereas large-scale farmers need advanced data analytics and reports. Once you identify your audience and their needs, you will be able to build reliable software.
  2. Competitor Analysis: An important measure that entrepreneurs take when considering farming app development is analyzing the competitors. Researching the existing applications in the agriculture sector will help to catch the weak and strong points, which will help to develop unique solutions. For example, if you identify an application that has all the necessary features but does not support multi-language, you can build an app adding the feature. The competitor analysis provides an opportunity to create something extraordinary from the competition.
  3. Geographic Consideration: Farming highly varies from region to region. In some locations, farmers might need water management tools, and in other regions, they might focus on pest detection. So, it is crucial to identify the needs with market research and understand the requirements depending on geographic area.
  • Define the application features and scope

After successfully recognizing the target audience and their needs, the next step is to define the core features to integrate into the application and the future scope. List down the challenges farmers and other agribusiness personnel face and define the core features according to them. Ensure the scope of the features and integration requirements to better map out the project plan.

  • Choose a suitable platform

Another major step in agriculture software development is choosing the right platform for the intended audience. As there are multiple platforms available where your application can be distributed, it is important to understand their use cases. The following are the platforms you can develop an application for:

  1. Android: Major app development in the agriculture sector is well-suited for Android systems due to its affordability and commonness among farmers. The platform offers extensive flexibility and scalability in application development.
  2. iOS: If your target audience consists of agribusiness or you are developing an application for developed countries, iOS would be the better choice. iOS users often retaliate with high-income individuals, which creates an opportunity to add premium features for monetization on the application.
  3. Web: Creating an application for the web platform unlocks user access through multiple devices, such as tablets, desktops, and even mobile phones. This platform is majorly suitable for agribusinesses who would like to utilize app features and tools through different devices.
  4. Cross-Platform: Now, the application developed for this platform is suitable for both iOS and Android, as it follows a single codebase in the development process. React Native and Flutter allow us to create a cross-platform application and help to reduce the cost of investing in two separate apps for different operating systems.

Also Read: Why React Native for Startups is the Best Choice?

  • Designing the User Interface

A non-complex user interface is a basic requirement when developing an application in the agri sector, as most users are not tech-savvy. To ensure users can navigate the application seamlessly and do not face complexity using the features, they must consult the best UI/UX service and make the application upright for easy navigation.

Along with that, keep in mind that most users will be accessing the application on their mobile phones. So, it is mandatory to ensure the designs are mobile-friendly and can be optimized depending on the device’s different sizes.

Development After the finalization of designs, the development phase begins. Any application development must start with building an MVP first, as it helps businesses determine if the application resonates with the defined goals and performs well in the market. In the MVP development, only core features will be added and tested.

  • Integration of technologies

In addition to that, AI and IoT can be integrated with the application to provide advanced functionality, such as yield forecasting and pest detection. You should explore the AI and IoT technologies and determine which one to integrate as per the functions required for the farming application.

Also Read: AI vs IoT

  • Testing

Testing is a much-needed step before the final launch of the application. Analysis of the performance data of the beta version of the application will help you determine where there is a need for improvement and how to improve the functionalities and the user interface.

Depending on all the analysis, make the changes and build the farming application appropriate for the agri sector and make it scalable for future growth.

  • Launch and maintain the application

Once the application has been tested and improved, it will be ready to launch in the market. Deploy the application in the relevant app store and start marketing to the target audience prior to the launch. Branding and promoting ensure the application reaches the target audience and that the chances of engagement increase since launch day.

Even after the final launch, monitoring will be important to take any update measures as per the user’s response and feedback. So, keep a dedicated team to maintain the agriculture application.

Cost Estimation of building an agriculture app

Numerous components are responsible for the cost estimation for developing software for the farming sector. From the designs to features, region to marketing, everything influences the overall development cost.

  • A basic application with minimum features like GPS tracking, weather reports, and market price ranges from $10,000 to $30,000. 
    • An advanced application, including AI-driven technologies, real-time monitoring, data analytics, or IoT integration, will cost you around $50,000 to $1,50,000, and even more, depending on the complexity.

“To better analyze the cost involvement in app development, you must read the following blog: A Comprehensive Analysis of App Development Cost to Upscale Business Growth

Create Your Agriculture App by Partnering with Appventurez

Building an agriculture application demands expertise in software development and an understanding of the challenges faced by the agriculture business sector. By partnering with the app development company, you can create an innovative application that is tailored to the audience’s needs and easy to navigate. Our team has the expertise to build extraordinary software and also provides post-launch support to ensure the best performance.

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    Auresh Saxena
    Auresh Saxena

    VP - Backend Technology at Appventurez

    Auresh Saxena joined Appventurez as VP of Technology (Backend) with 14+ years of experience as a Backend Developer. He has deep technical expertise in React, Node js, Gatsby, Python, PHP jQuery, Quality Assurance, and AWS.