One of the jobs of Extension is to solve problems for the community that they serve. In my work with oyster aquaculture, sometimes those are big problems (e.g., water quality, permitting, etc.) but sometimes you notice the small things that add up. Working with oyster farmers, we saw that they were doing a lot of repetitive tasks and jotting things down and then losing those papers.
In this case, we figured that a lot of the oyster farmers have smartphones, so why not put them to use for these really simple tasks. Working with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System IT experts, Auburn University and Sea Grant agents in other coastal states for feedback and advice, we developed an app to help simplify the day-to-day activities of oyster production.
Unlike some of the commercially available inventory management apps and software, the intent of this app is to make life a little easier by providing simple calculators and by helping them keep and share basic information.
Although the app was created with Alabama producers in mind, it is hopefully useful for producers across the country, especially the oyster calculators. The app includes several customized calculators that help producers determine the number of shellfish seed delivered (with a record of that estimated number within confidence intervals), assist growers in achieving desired stocking densities (based on their own calculations) and help estimate current stock on a farm.
For example, a farmer often gets a delivery of oyster seed as one large bundle. We encourage farmers to always get their own estimated count to confirm the one provided by the seed supplier. The math can get complicated, and we often used a spreadsheet on a computer.
With this app, using some basic estimation techniques (with apologies in advance for the poor video quality and a promise that we will shoot another workshop this summer), all those numbers can be entered on the spot, with the total number of seed estimated (with 95-percent confidence intervals). The farmer can even send that report off by email if he or she wants, or just save it for later reference.
On the app, users can also track the latest news from the Auburn University Shellfish Lab Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds. The app features a section to submit questions to the Extension water resources team and the Auburn University Shellfish Lab.
We hope the app will act like a Swiss Army Knife with a lot of useful tools that the farmer will always have in his or her pocket or on the dash of a boat.
In addition, we would love to hear from farmers about how we can improve the app and what features should be added. It’s a work in progress, and we hope that we can build features on top of this base. In fact, one New England farmer suggested adding in a logbook to allow documentation of events like storms or freshets. Another Mississippi biologist suggested having customized harvest reports for each state. We’ll look at each of these suggestions as we look to improve this app.
The Oyster Farming app is available as a free download on both the Apple and Google stores. Download the app from the Apple Store here and also from Google Play here. For more information about the Oyster Farming app, visit Alabama Extension at www.aces.edu.
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