Since I joined the Agworld team in 2018 there have been massive changes in our industry, and many trends have come and gone, but recently I realized that there is one trend that I still keep noticing in conversations with farm managers, agronomists and IT teams at ag retailers: the siren call of "let's just build our own software." On the surface, it seems logical because it gives you the ability to tailor your tools to your farm or ag retail operation instead of someone else's.

But, what I've witnessed numerous times over the past 8 years is that if you scratch beneath the surface, the reality of building and maintaining your own digital solution is far from the dream; especially in 2026 where farmers and their business partners need decision power, not custom beta projects.

I recently spoke with a grower in the US who told us: "We can just hire our own developer and ask them to create exactly what we want, so why would we pay for your software instead?" It's an understandable impulse, but in our experience, it's exactly the kind of thinking that leads teams to spend countless hours on code, infrastructure, bugs, and features that don't move the needle on operational performance.

To understand why "building your own system" is often a false economy, let's unpack what goes into professional farm management software, and why mature, purpose-built farm management information systems like Agworld exist in the first place.

Complexity in farm data isn't custom; it's universal

A farm management information system isn't "just a database". It's a sophisticated system that:

• Captures and consolidates crop plans, inputs, logistics, budgets, field operations and more.
• Enables collaboration between growers, staff, agronomists, and advisors on the same platform, through offline-enabled mobile apps or website access.
• Provides structured reporting and compliance documentation that meets regulatory needs for a wide variety of crops and reporting bodies.
• Is connected to other systems such as in-field IoT devices, equipment providers, ERP, other software tools and more.

Agworld was created to scale with complexity, because the needs of growers and those who work with them are ever-changing. By bringing together growers, agronomists, ag retailers, contractors and other 3rd parties into the same platform, Agworld provides businesses a central, single source of truth, improving accuracy and reducing duplicate effort.

Building that level of integration in-house means essentially replicating years of domain expertise and engineering effort, as well as maintaining it into perpetuity, all while still trying to run an agricultural business.

Built by farmers, continuously enhanced

A key distinction between a homemade solution and a proven platform is product investment. Agworld isn't a one-off project, it's a professionally developed product with a long track record of iteration and refinement. Since its founding in 2009, Agworld has attracted significant investment and is now part of the Semios Group, a move that positions it as a strategically important, financially stable business of a global independent leader in agricultural technology.

This kind of structure and backing supports a large development team, continuous feature updates, customer-facing support teams serving all regions, and robust infrastructure. In contrast, a DIY in-house solution often stalls after the first prototype, leaving growers and agribusinesses to manage bugs, scalability issues, security, and training on their own.

Shared investment beats isolated costs

One of the strongest arguments against building your own solution is this: the total cost of ownership rarely ends up being lower. Did you know that over US$70 MILLION has been invested into developing Agworld over the last 17 years? 'Just hiring a developer' might seem attractive, until the real cost of building a solution that works becomes clear. Where do you say "I don't want to invest further"? $50,000, $500,000, $5 Million, or…? Wherever your appetite to invest stops, rest assured, at that point there will still be many more features and functionalities on the wish-list!

Think beyond the initial development cost:

• Do you have a development and support team to maintain uptime 24/7?
• Who will keep integrations with weather services, compliance libraries, machinery manufacturers and others up-to-date?
• What happens when you need reporting for certification or audits?
• Who is on top of cyber security? Is your data at risk of getting exposed by bad actors?
• Do you have daily secure backups?
• Are you complying with agricultural data standards?
• Do you have a professional support team to help you overcome issues?

These are just a few of the behind the scenes costs that are required to run ag software at scale with reliability and high quality for the long-term. Commercial platforms like Agworld spread these costs across thousands of users, while a custom solution puts all the long-term burden on your balance sheet; even if it seems cheaper upfront.

Real Decision Power Over Hype

If 2025 has taught us anything, it is that just data isn't enough. What matters is structured, actionable information that informs decisions. Growers don't need more siloed data, an elaborate spreadsheet or a bespoke app; they need a system that integrates operations, planning, insights, budgets and collaboration into one coherent workflow where all players can collaborate on the same dataset.

Rather than allocating precious capital and attention to building software from scratch, the most successful operations that I have encountered are focusing on:

• Adopting proven solutions that scale with their business.
• Integrating with partners and advisors seamlessly.
• Leveraging structured data to make better decisions across seasons.

Platforms like Agworld are purpose-built for this, evolving to meet the real, gritty demands of modern farming, backed by professional development and broad industry experience.

In the end, farmers don't need another big technical project: they need decision power. Choosing a robust, continuously enhanced farm management information system gives them that.