Access to information and actions within Litefarm is defined by a users role (and in some cases modified by Ownership and Assignment). A users role is not inherent to that user, but rather that users relationship to a specific farm (see Association between user and farm for more detail). For our Fall 2020 release, we define three roles:
Farm Owner
Farm Manager
Farm Worker
This document seeks to establish the concept of roles. However, it does not define what current functionality is available by role. New requirements, on the other hand, will define what information and functionality is available by role.
Detailed explanations of primary and secondary roles as well as use cases follow.
Primary Roles
Almost all farms will have these roles.
Role | Exists for … | Description | Rights | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Farm Owner AKA Farmer, Owner | All farms | The owner of the farm. In some cases, they are the sole owner/operator of the farm business. In others, they work with their spouse or other partner, possibly just occasionally bringing in temporary workers / WWOOFERS. Other farm owners are more removed from the day-to-day management, leaving that up to a Supervisor to tend to, while they are mainly involved with the planning stages, tracking price lists, financials, overall farm issues, payroll, weather monitoring etc. However, that said, most Farmers are pretty involved with monitoring daily farm activity. | Full access. | |
Farm Manager AKA Foreman, Farm Supervisor | More mature, larger farms | Responsible for enacting the day-to-day activities in order to keep on track with the farmers overall cropping plan for the year. Assigns tasks to workers and monitors their work as well as overall farm activity and fertility. Reports back to the farmer. This position is often year round. Depending on the size of the farm, there could be multiple supervisors - e.g. Greenhouse supervisor, Berry supervisor, etc. | Access to almost everything except financials. | Almost full access. May not see worker wages or financial insights. |
Farm Worker AKA Farm Labourer, Farmhand | Almost all farms | Workers come in many permutations. Some work standard 8 - 5 type schedules for a season while others are hourly. Some workers are “floaters” that are assigned tasks for a specified time period, e.g. to help this person or that person while others are brought on for a specific activity, e.g. to harvest, to work in the greenhouse, to run or maintain machinery, etc. | Read on most things. Write on some items. |
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Not all farms will have this role OR an individual may have several of these roles, OR they may take on one of these roles in addition to their primary role. These roles should not be developed as part the Fall 2020 release.
Role | Exists for … | Description | Rights |
|---|---|---|---|
Sales Representative AKA Marketing Rep | Depends on preference of the owner | Responsible for activities relating to the sale of produce including marketing / invoicing of pre-sales, CSA box programs. Also may be responsible for bringing food to weekly markets, setting up display table-day sales. May be responsible for promoting and arranging sales with restaurants, wholesalers, and grocery stores. | |
Quality Control | May be the same person as sales. Determines 'pick sheets' (instructions to workers as to what crops to harvest in what amounts as needed for the day) then monitors the harvest to ensure it meets quality standards before delivery. More common on farms that raise livestock. | ||
Organic Manager | Role overlaps with Farm Manager or Sales. | Some operations have one person who is responsible for all things related to organic certification. These activities include certification renewal, maintaining compliance documentation, communication with their certifying body, and ensuring inputs are approved and used according to regulations. | |
Super Admin | LiteFarm staff | As the maintainers of the LiteFarm project, we need to have access to all farms in the system in order to support users. It also makes sense to have a few limited aggregate views to understand how users are interacting with the system. | |
Technicians AKA Verification Officer “VO” | Farms that are part of a certifying board the makes visits | Technicians do not work for the farm, but rather for the organic farm association. They visit many different farms in order to record practices, help the farmers, and make sure they are complying with regulations. They will need access to most data points (excluding potentially aggregate financials) at many farms. | |
Researcher | May or may not be handled as a role (could also be an export + ETL process). Researchers are interested in aggregate (and potentially anonymized) datasets generated in LiteFarm. |
Use Cases
Below are a few examples of how the above roles may look in the field. Not all roles exist at all farms!
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Farm Manager walks around and discusses with Workers the weekly plan. The Farm Manager uses verbal cues like, “Don’t forget tomorrow we have to do x.” The Farm Manager schedules specific days in advance as harvest days for the season. The Farm Manager schedules special wholesale orders and they reoccur weekly. The Farm Manager uses an app called “To Do List” as a communication tool for ad hoc jobs such as a fence repair, irrigation repair, etc. Everyone on the farm has access to the app, so the Farm Manager can assign jobs to employees and the Workers can report when they complete tasks in near real-time. Workers are long-term and knowledgeable. Workers are paid 8 hours per day, 5 days a week.
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For this use case, Workers and Farm Managers don’t have a whole lot of knowledge. There is churn from season to season. Farmer or Farm Manager uses paper or large whiteboard in worker area that everyone can contribute to. Everyone will jot down notes, checks tasks as completed, and list new tasks as needed. Oftentimes, info is lost week-to-week when the whiteboard is erased. Farm or Farm Manager wants all Workers to have a physical copy of the crop plan so everyone is on the same page. If the plan changes, the Farmer or Farm Manager will print a new plan and post it in the common area. The Farmer or Farm Manager performs a weekly walk around to discuss the to do list for that week. Farmer, Farm Manager, and Workers will use the crop maps and annotate as they discuss. For example, the Farmer might say:
“Carrots go into Jupiter Field 4 bed, row 3. They should be spaced at x, y, and z.”
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