Vegetable Production Management (VPM) Core Release

VPM (Vegetable Production Management) is a comprehensive farm management solution built on Microsoft Dataverse and the Power Platform, purpose-built for small to mid-size vegetable farming operations. This Core Release delivers the complete Dataverse data architecture and a Model-Driven Power App covering production planning and field operations — the foundational layer upon which the complete VPM platform is structured and released module by module.

Farm owners and managers, field supervisors, pack house operators, and office staff at vegetable operations ranging from a few acres to several hundred will find this system built for their specific workflows. It is particularly well-suited for operations that are organic certified or transitioning to organic, direct-marketing through CSA programs and farmers markets, or selling through food hubs, regional distributors, or wholesale channels — and for any operation facing food safety compliance requirements.

Most vegetable farm operations manage their business through spreadsheets, whiteboards, and tribal knowledge. The software options available are either enterprise-complex and enterprise-priced, built for large commodity operations, or consumer-grade tools that lack the compliance and traceability infrastructure that growing regulatory requirements demand. VPM is purpose-built for the gap in the middle.

The pressure to fill that gap is intensifying. FDA FSMA Section 204 mandates lot-level traceability for fresh produce from field to first receiver — final law since 2022, with Congressional-mandated enforcement beginning July 20, 2028. VPM addresses both current organic certification requirements and provides the architectural foundation to adapt as final FSMA 204 compliance specifics take shape.

Every transaction links to a Production Plan, creating a complete traceability chain from planting decision to customer dock. Built-in support for USDA Organic, Oregon Tilth, and WSDA certification is part of the core data model. The current implementation addresses 85–90% of FDA FSMA 204 requirements.

The architecture extends to Microsoft Business Central, NetSuite, and warehouse management platforms as operations grow. VPM is designed to be customized by internal IT staff or implementation partners under separate services engagement. This solution has been in beta production at an organic vegetable farm in Bow, Washington with 40–60 acres under cultivation — tested against real field operations, pack shed workflows, and customer order requirements, not a theoretical use case.

This Core Release is the entry point for the complete VPM platform. The following are released as separate AppSource components that extend and build upon this Core:

A word about implementation. This is not a system you install and have running the following week. Most vegetable operations have years of accumulated knowledge about how their farm works — planting sequences, customer relationships, pack shed rhythms — that lives in the heads of the people who built the operation. Getting a system like this working well means translating that knowledge into a new structure, and that takes real time and effort. The good news is that the Power Platform foundation means your own staff or a trusted local IT resource can do most of that work without depending on expensive outside specialists who have never worked in a greenhouse, a field, or a pack shed. Sample data sets and configuration guides are included to support evaluation before committing to full deployment. If your first reaction to this system is "this looks powerful but getting it running on my farm is going to be real work" — you are reading it correctly, and you are probably exactly the kind of operator this was built for.