A farm plan that learns from the field

Test changes before spending money. Use each season to make the next plan better.

Adding trees, crops or livestock changes more than a farm’s harvest. It changes the work, equipment, cash needs and care the land requires. A good plan must account for all of them.

Shedu’s working Southwest Florida simulator lets growers test those choices. It brings weather, soil, farm costs and land use into one comparison. The longer-term aim is a model that learns from field records, improving management, profit and care for the land over time.

Start with your land

Describe your intentions in the new conversational farm planner. Save your questions, explore planting combinations and develop a provisional concept. Free use requires an account and training contribution; Private is $120 per year, billed annually.

The earlier Southwest Florida calculator

Start with the 20-acre example near Alva, Florida. Choose primary trees or crops, then add strawberries, flowers, herbs or support plantings. You can add any named crop or cultivar. Costs, weather and soil assumptions are prefilled; open the optional details to change them. The planner compares individual crops, mixed designs and your combined planting over 5–30 years.

The model uses 2005–2025 NASA POWER weather and USDA mapped soil. It tracks soil water, crop stress, tree growth and assumed storm losses. The output shows returns, work hours, equipment costs and habitat share. Small microgreen and mushroom operations are optional additions. Source-linked integration suggestions explain placement and evidence limits; custom crops use provisional templates. Earlier livestock scenarios remain available inside the planner.

The current planner compares 20 acres over 20 years by default. Secondary crops use part of the growing area, with their own costs and labor. Long-term value is discounted farm earnings after establishment and paid owner work, before grants. Sales ceilings limit what each crop can earn. Custom cash crops stay marked as partial budgets until yield and price are supplied. Contractor harvest costs are charged, but contractor hours are outside the work estimate.

Try lower prices, a wetter climate or different secondary crops to see how the comparison changes. Results describe the selected candidate designs. Habitat share, crop count and permanent cover are planning measures, not wildlife counts. Weather ranges exclude uncertainty in costs and crop responses. Pest suppression, disease reduction and fertilizer savings are not automatically credited. The updated budgets differ from the earlier simulator, so its old default returns do not apply.

From a scenario to a better plan

The prototype runs calculations; it does not yet learn automatically from farms. Field trials would test predictions, record failures and improve the next model. Detailed crop and tree tools such as WOFOSTGym, Hi-sAFe and USDA IFSM remain candidates for future integration.

The farm coordinator manages fieldwork, contractors and specialist advice. The software developer builds the models and data tools. The software is free to farms; operating it still needs funding. Data use requires farmer permission, and future data revenue is unpriced.

What the Florida numbers suggest

A separate ten-year budget calculation compares 2,304 combinations on four parcel sizes. These ten-year specialty-crop budgets are separate from the interactive planner above. Different crops, time spans and risk assumptions mean the totals cannot be compared directly.

Returns include startup, equipment and all work, before income tax. They use September 2026 buying power and a 5% discount rate, which gives less weight to money earned later. Land purchase costs and forgone rental income are excluded. Inflation data

The five-acre plan starts with $65,490. That excludes household needs, cash reserves and major site work. Ordinary labor costs $17.25/hour: Florida’s $15 wage floor plus an assumed 15% employer allowance. Wage schedule

Lease costs use Florida’s 2025 irrigated-cropland average of $268/acre, adjusted to $278, with an assumed $1,200 parcel minimum. This excludes buildings and is not a Lee County quote. Owned land uses an unverified $100/acre annual allowance. Rent data, survey scope

Farm use may qualify land for lower property taxes. Some farm costs can reduce income taxes. Land itself cannot be depreciated. No tax savings are assumed. Lee County, IRS

Sales decide whether the plan pays

The main case assumes microgreens sell for $3.50/ounce, with 90% sold. Five acres needs buyers for about 62 pounds of greens and 63 pounds of mushrooms each week. Mushrooms assume $16/pound and purchased growing blocks.

Microgreens are sold to cooks and chefs. Local demand still needs testing through repeat paid orders. With weaker greens sales, the strongest tested five-acre mix drops greens and returns about $18k from mushrooms and mango. Marketing, microgreens budget, mushroom yields

Animals add feed, care and processing costs. They lower returns in these scenarios; measured grazing benefits could change that. Different crops and sales channels also prevent this from proving that permaculture outperforms mechanized farming. Poultry budgets, livestock budgets, mango budget

What better coordination could save

The AI case assumes 20% less office and sales work, 15% less coordination, 8% lower equipment-access costs and 2.5% less production work. Adoption and review costs are deducted. Disease prevention earns no assumed income.

The five-acre budget includes about 32 coordinator hours a year at $45/hour. Routine farm labor is separate. Work scheduling and disease planning are development goals; the prototype compares cost allowances but does not dispatch contractors or predict disease.

Funding public field trials

An eligible nonprofit could run public trials of mulch, ground covers or water use. Southern SARE offers research grants up to $30,000 over two years; eligibility and allowed costs apply. Farm startup and commercial product testing are excluded. Grant rules

Nonprofit support must serve the public, with fair pay and separate accounts. It is not extra farm profit. Approved Florida conservation practices may qualify for 75% cost sharing; this does not cover all farm expenses. Neither funding source enters the farm returns. IRS rules, Florida program

What this means for a farm

The numbers favor a staged, selective approach. Specialty crops can earn strong returns when customers pay; mango offers a lower-work option in the outdoor simulation. Animals and annual vegetables need a stronger economic case under the tested assumptions. More habitat can mean less income and less work, while weather can change the outcome.

The simulator makes those tradeoffs visible before investment. Field trials can then replace assumptions with measured results. Grants can fund that learning. Lasting profit still depends on farm sales covering the full cost of land, equipment and people.

October 2026. Model estimates; local sales, costs and environmental outcomes require field measurement.