Glossary
Terms that come up in everyday farm work -- precision agriculture, finance and traceability -- explained in plain language, with the real regional terminology of each market.
Precision agriculture
- EVI
- Enhanced Vegetation Index. A variant of NDVI that corrects better for atmospheric distortion and background soil influence, and does not saturate as quickly in crops with heavy biomass (dense canopies, like advanced-stage corn or orchards). Where NDVI starts to "flatten out" in very closed canopies and stops distinguishing real vigor differences, EVI tends to stay sensitive. In practice, both indices are used together: NDVI as the quick, historically comparable read, and EVI as a check once the canopy is dense enough that NDVI starts losing resolution.
- GPS / RTK
- GPS is the satellite positioning system that locates a point in the field within a few meters of accuracy — enough to draw a field's perimeter or place a scouting observation. RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) is a correction that narrows that margin down to centimeters, using an additional real-time reference signal. RTK is what makes line-over-line auto-guided planting or spraying possible with no overlap or gaps, something standard GPS can't guarantee. Not every task needs RTK: for drawing a field boundary or marking where a scouting observation happened, standard GPS is more than enough.
- NDVI
- Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Compares how a crop reflects visible light versus near-infrared light in a satellite image to estimate crop vigor. It ranges from -1 to 1: values near 1 mean dense, healthy vegetation, near 0 mean bare soil or sparse vegetation, and negative values usually mean water or clouds. NDVI does not replace field scouting — it helps decide where to look first across many hectares. In Segesio, NDVI can be reviewed alongside a field's activity history, soil sampling and weather, so a spot on the map gets confirmed with real data before anyone acts on it.
- Soil sampling
- Taking soil samples at representative points across a field to lab-test parameters such as available phosphorus (Bray P), organic matter or cation exchange capacity (CEC), among others. The result is the technical basis for deciding a fertilization plan with judgment, instead of applying a standard rate without knowing the soil's actual starting point. Cross-referenced with a field's historical NDVI, sampling helps tell whether a low-vigor zone comes from a soil limitation or another cause. In Segesio, each sample is georeferenced and linked to the fertilization plan it produced, with the source of every value documented.
- VRA (Variable Rate Application)
- The practice of applying an input — seed, fertilizer, crop protection product — at different rates within the same field, instead of one flat rate for the whole area, based on management zones defined by NDVI, soil sampling or historical yield maps. The goal is to apply more where the yield potential justifies it and less where it doesn't, instead of averaging the whole field to a single number. It requires a prescription map (the zone-by-zone rate plan) and equipment able to vary the rate on the go. It's one of the most concrete uses of precision agriculture, beyond just looking at a satellite map.
Field & management
- Agricultural input
- Any product applied or consumed in the production process: seed, fertilizer, crop-protection product, fuel. Beyond its cost, each input carries data that matters for traceability and safety: recommended rate, pre-harvest/re-entry interval where it applies, and available stock. Tracking an input as its own record — not just a line of expense — is what lets you calculate how much was applied per hectare, when stock is about to run low, and which applications used a specific product batch. In Segesio, input movement stays connected to the activity that consumed it and the cost it generated, instead of being tracked separately.
- Cadastral record
- The official land-registry identification number of a rural property with the corresponding public authority, independent of how the operation internally divides that property into management fields. One cadastral record can contain several production fields, and a production field can sometimes span more than one cadastral record. It matters for legal, tax and title purposes — not an agronomic data point, but one that field management still needs on hand when answering to a public authority or a deed.
- Field
- The basic management unit of a farm: a delimited area, usually with its own crop and production history, where activities, inputs and harvests get recorded. Regional terms vary — "lote" in the Southern Cone, "parcela"/"predio" in Mexico and Colombia, "talhão" in Brazil, "parcelle" in France, and "paddock" in Australia/New Zealand (more livestock-associated). A field is different from a cadastral record: it's an agronomic management unit, not necessarily a legal property unit. In Segesio, the field is the axis that connects activities, expenses, NDVI, sampling and harvest — the unit cost and profitability per hectare get calculated on.
- Growing season / crop cycle
- The full production cycle of a crop, from planting to harvest, and the accounting/operational period used to group that production's activities, costs and income. Spanish-speaking markets use different words for the same thing — "zafra" in the Southern Cone, "ciclo" in Mexico and Colombia — and Portuguese uses "safra". In Segesio, the growing season is the frame that groups a field's activities, expenses and harvest so cost per hectare and profitability get calculated over the right period, instead of blending two different seasons into one number.
- Yield (kg/ha)
- The amount of product harvested per unit of area, usually expressed in kilograms per hectare (or bushels, tons or bags per hectare depending on crop and region). Cross-referenced with cost per hectare, it's what lets you calculate a field's real profitability — two fields with the same cost can have very different economic results if one yielded more than the other. Compared across fields or seasons, yield also helps spot management zones with different production potential within the same field, feeding VRA decisions for the following season.
Finance
- Cost per hectare
- The total spend invested in producing a field, divided by its worked area — but calculated with judgment, not as a blind average. It separates a field's direct cost (inputs, labor, harvest) from structure costs shared across several fields (administrative salaries, general insurance, shared machinery), and groups each expense by field and activity instead of splitting everything evenly. It's different from profitability per hectare, which also factors in the income that field generated. In Segesio, cost per hectare comes from expenses already classified during the season, available at any time rather than only at closing.
Traceability
- Agricultural traceability
- The ability to reconstruct, for any production field, what was done, when, with which product, at what rate and who was responsible, from planting through the harvest's final destination. It's not a single document — it's the full chain of records (field book, stock movements, delivery notes, harvest documentation) that together answer that question without reconstructing anything from memory. An increasing number of buyers, certifiers and export markets require it as a condition of entry, not a nice-to-have. In Segesio, traceability comes out of daily operations already on record, instead of being a separate exercise done right before an audit.
- Delivery note
- The document that accompanies the physical movement of goods — for example, grain leaving the field for a storage facility or buyer — recording what moved, how much, and between whom, without being the invoice itself. The equivalent term varies by market: "remito" in the Southern Cone, "guía de remisión" in Mexico and Colombia, "nota fiscal" (the tax document that plays this role) plus "romaneio" (the quantity-control receipt) in Brazil, and "bon de livraison" in France. In Segesio, each stock movement can be linked to its delivery note or equivalent document, so traceability doesn't depend on reconstructing a shipment from memory weeks later.
- Field book
- The chronological record of every activity carried out on a field: planting, crop-protection applications, fertilization, irrigation, harvest, each with date, product, rate and the responsible operator. It's the document a certifier, a demanding buyer or a phytosanitary audit ends up asking for. In Germany, the equivalent category is known as "Ackerschlagkartei" — an established market term there, not a literal translation of "field book". In Segesio, the field book comes from daily operations: activities entered once feed the phytosanitary field-book report, cost per hectare and the field's history, with no separate document to duplicate.
- Pre-harvest / re-entry interval
- The minimum time that must pass between a crop-protection application and, depending on the case, harvest (pre-harvest interval) or a person re-entering the field without protective equipment (re-entry interval). It depends on the product, rate and crop, and is set by the product's current label — not something to estimate from memory. Ignoring it has direct food-safety and worker-safety implications, and it's one of the pieces of data most often lost in a scattered paper field book. In Segesio, an input's pre-harvest/re-entry interval is shown alongside the recorded application, cutting the room for human error on a number that doesn't tolerate approximation.
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