A case study in efficiency with Agworld’s farm management software
Challenge
Booth Ranches, a family-owned 7,000-acre citrus operation, struggled with efficiently managing recommendations, compliance, and coordination between team members. Writing recommendations took 4–5 hours for half their acreage, while evolving regulations required extensive manual reporting. Additionally, PCAs were tied to cumbersome digital platforms, keeping them at their desks instead of in the field.
Solution
Recognizing the need for a more connected and streamlined system, Booth Ranches adopted Agworld to enhance efficiency across their operation. By leveraging Agworld’s collaborative platform, they were able to centralize their workflow, making real-time updates accessible to all team members.
Result
50% reduction in the time needed for writing recommendations. 80% decrease in manual reporting time for regulatory compliance. Significant reduction in office time for field teams, allowing more focus on on-the-ground crop management. Improved operational efficiency, ensuring seamless coordination and a unified, data-driven approach to farm management.
Booth Ranches was founded in 1957 when Otis Booth Jr. inherited his first 40 acres of navel oranges. Today, his legacy is carried forward by his daughter and company president, Loren Booth. Under her leadership, Booth Ranches has now grown into a fully integrated citrus company that farms 7,000 acres of citrus throughout California’s Central Valley.
What sets Booth Ranches apart is its commitment to excellence and tradition. Jason Reynolds, Vice President of Farming, emphasized, “We’re fully family-owned, with one grower, one family. This independence allows us to operate the way we want, without being beholden to anyone.” The company’s operations include a diverse citrus portfolio of navel oranges, lemons, mandarins, and Cara Cara oranges. Every orange is grown, packed, shipped, and sold directly by Booth Ranches.
Adding to their uniqueness, Booth Ranches is also a woman-driven company. Loren Booth’s leadership is complemented by women in key roles, including the CFO, CEO, and PCAs on staff. Stephanie Herring, a PCA at Booth Ranches noted, “Having a woman-driven team in agriculture is something completely unheard of, and it’s amazing to see it here at Booth Ranches.”
Overcoming workflow bottlenecks
Before adopting Agworld, Booth Ranches faced significant workflow limitations that slowed efficiency. Stephanie said that writing recommendations for just half of their acreage took four to five hours with their legacy system, limiting their ability to stay productive. Additionally, agronomists and PCAs spent too much time on administrative tasks instead of working in the field.
“We saw a real need for a more holistic approach to how we managed our programs,” explained Jason Reynolds. “The main reason we switched to Agworld was its ability to keep us in the field while ensuring uniform operations across the entire company.”
Evolving regulations added complexity, requiring extensive manual reporting and underscoring the need for a streamlined farm management system.
Booth Ranches turned to Agworld to streamline operations, improve compliance, and save time and the impact was transformative. “Agworld’s flexibility and user-friendly interface stood out. It’s built for growers, allowing us to operate off iPads and smartphones, which is crucial for keeping our boots on the ground and our eyes on the trees,” said Jason.
Rec writing in minutes with Agworld
Switching to Agworld brought immediate improvements to Booth Ranches’ workflow, particularly in rec writing. The process, which once consumed hours, is now twice as fast. “I think now it would take me maybe 2 hours, and that is insane compared to what originally it was.” said Stephanie.
One of the biggest game-changers has been the ability to edit recommendations in real-time. “Writing recs has always been somewhat cumbersome. There are legal issues, there are environmental issues, there are a lot of different stuff going on, and any time you have to go back and make a change, it can take up quite a bit of time. Agworld enables us to make that change in the field on the spot. You can edit very rapidly. It takes, I think literally minutes instead of hours to go through and make a change,” said Jason.
Stephanie pointed out that the system offers built-in safeguards to enhance compliance, making it easy to set custom limits for active ingredients or application frequency. “What’s really great is that Agworld offers a way to add safeguards on top of what's already there for compliance. So I can go in and add, I don't want to put more than this amount for an active ingredient. I don't want to apply this more than once. It's completely customizable to me. So I really enjoy that side of it,” added Stephanie.
The ability to quickly swap out products has been another breakthrough. “Changing out a product used to take just as long as rewriting the entire rec again, so 4 or 5 hours for hundreds of acres,” Stephanie recalled. “But with Agworld, we changed out 4000 acres of a product one time and it took us 20 minutes.”
Adapting to regulatory changes
Over the past year, evolving state regulations have kept growers on their toes, but Agworld has been instrumental in helping Booth Ranches stay ahead of compliance changes.
Jason Reynolds cited a recent example of Agworld’s rapid response when the county tightened its compliance reporting window from 10 days to just 24 hours. With little time to adjust, Booth Ranches needed a solution fast. Agworld was able to respond quickly to the increased compliance regulations. Agworld enhanced standard reports within the platform to take into account these changing regulations and ensure that Booth Ranches and other clients in California have the tools they need to continue to comply with California's ever-increasing requirements.
Jason Reynolds emphasized that their previous provider wouldn’t have been able to adapt as quickly, leaving them to figure it out on their own. The Agworld team built the reporting system with audits in mind, and Jason believes he was the first to be audited under the new rule.
“The new report breaks down everything I need so I can run it in five minutes and finalize it in 20,” said Stephanie. “Without it, I would have had to create a custom report for every single block, which would have taken a week and I would have had to repeat that every 24 hours. This report has been a game-changer for us.”
Efficiency on the go
Agworld’s mobile-first approach has transformed how Booth Ranches operates, allowing team members to work efficiently from anywhere and reducing unnecessary trips back to the office. “If you're sitting in Bakersfield and your office is in Orange Cove, it's going to take you. 2.5 hours to come back and write something on a computer, whereas Agworld, as soon as you have signal, even if you don't have signal, you can write the rec,” said Stephanie.
Not being tied to a desk has allowed the team to stay agile and responsive. “Agworld saves time. It saves energy. There's way less truck time driving back and forth to the office. Now we're out in the field. We could stay on target working with our scouts,” added Jason.
Better communication has also been a key benefit, keeping the entire team aligned no matter where they are. “It enables me personally to communicate with a large team with different needs, different requirements, different reporting needs all in one space,” said Jason.
Setting the standard with Agworld
The success of Agworld at Booth Ranches has influenced their entire operational ecosystem. In Jason Reynold’s view, it would be simpler if everyone switched to Agworld. “We have to communicate with our outside operators, spray rig operators, FLCs, etc. They all use different programs,” he explained.
“But as we integrate more with Agworld, the process is becoming much simpler for everyone to work on the same platform, and we're getting more and more feedback that it is much easier for them to operate off that platform. So ultimately, it would be a lot easier if just everyone switched to Agworld.”
"The less time they spend in the office dealing with paperwork, the better everyone's job is going to be, but especially the more productive they will be as a whole. This program helps us do that immensely. It saves time. It saves energy. There's way less truck time driving back and forth to the office. Now we're out in the field. We could stay on target working with our scouts."
Yenda Producers Co-operative used to record their agronomic data by writing it down first and then later entering it in a computer. This way of handling data caused a lot of extra work due to double handling and did not offer an easy way to go back into historic data and find information when they needed it. Also, as a wide variety of both summer and winter crops get grown by Yenda Prods’ growers in overlapping seasons, there is no ‘slow time’ and thus the agronomists had a need to plan accurately and rapidly.
When Ben VanDyke started to grow food crops next to his existing grass seed operation, he found that he needed a better way to track his input applications for certification purposes. VanDyke Farms is also surrounded in the immediate area by sensitive crops, which necessitates a high degree of caution when spraying and accurate input application tracking to prevent spray drift from occurring.
The Toscan family grows a variety of crops and needed a simple way to create records of the spraying operations that take place in each individual crop and field. Prunes form part of their operation and they therefore need to be able to supply accurate records of exactly what inputs have been applied at any given time during the season for food certification purposes.
Warwick and Di Holding were searching for a system they could use to keep accurate records for their farming operation without creating a large additional burden of work. They also wanted to be able to see accurate financial cropping results for their operation, Pontara Grain, in order to guide them in making more profitable decisions in the future.
