Weigh the season.
CARAT builds a month-by-month cashflow for one farm: 20 t of wheat at 9,900 UAH a tonne, the diesel that harvested it, the month the money actually lands. Change one price and watch the curve move.
What CARAT is — Cashflow, Agronomy, and Risk Assessment Toolkit
A cashflow projection tool for extension advisors. You sit with a farmer, build the season's numbers, and print a financing package the farmer carries to a bank. CARAT is not the bank's application — it is the evidence the credit file is built on.
Set up the farm
Hectares, currency, the day the projection opens, and what is already there: cash in the account and grain in store. Add the tractors, drills and combines the farm actually runs, so costs match its machinery.
Plant the season
Take a crop plan from your library, set the hectares, and drop it on a projection year. CARAT prices every operation from your catalogue and puts each cost in the month the money moves, not the month the work happens.
Print the package
Read the lowest month. Fork a scenario, sell part of the crop forward, look again. When the numbers hold, print the financing package — or give the banker a link behind a PIN that shows the same figures.
Prices that name their source
Every price carries where it came from and the date it took effect: your own figure, the CARAT catalogue, a public market quote, or a macro reference. Feeds refresh them. A dead feed leaves a stale price, not a broken one.
One plan library, every client
Fork a CARAT starter plan, change the seed rate or the spring nitrogen, and the cost rolls up: inputs, labour and machinery, per hectare and per tonne. Tune the winter-wheat plan for loamy ground once, then use it on every farm.
A season strip and a cash line
Crops sit on a strip, year by year, over anything from twelve months to seven years. Above them runs the cash line: money in, money out, and the lowest point the balance reaches. Change a number and the curve moves.
Scenarios beside the Baseline
Baseline is what you and the farmer agreed on. Fork it to sow later, cut nitrogen, or sell part of the crop forward, then read the difference: lowest cash, end of horizon, total revenue.
Loans, stock and the other lines
Loan drawdowns and repayments land on their real months, and debt-service coverage follows. Grain already in store, rent, a subsidy, a machine payment — each goes in as its own line and shows in the monthly schedule.
A door for the banker
The package prints under its banker's title — "Agronomic & cashflow basis for a credit application" — and the farmer carries it in. It also opens online behind a PIN you issue to one bank. Extend it, or revoke it.
Who it's for
Advisors and advisory services
Work you can bill for
You already count the season — on paper, in a notebook, in a spreadsheet. CARAT keeps every client in one portfolio, each in its farm's own currency. Only you log in — farmers never need an account. The bank package becomes a service the farm pays for.
Banks lending to small farms
A small loan, a big cost to check
Every borrower arrives with a package built the same way: a source under every price, DSCR by projection year, figures behind a PIN instead of an email thread. Lay two farms side by side and compare them line by line — checking a small loan stops costing what a big one does.
Non-bank lenders
What to check before anyone drives out
The decision is due in days and nobody is free to visit the field. The PIN opens the projection exactly as the advisor froze it into the package: month by month, a date under every price. It does not replace an inspection — but it shows exactly what to verify on site.
Agricultural universities
A season instead of a workbook
Students build a season on real crop plans and real quotes, not numbers invented for an exercise. Change the nitrogen price and the curve shifts — the lowest cash slides into May. A few years on, these students sit down at a farmer's table themselves.
Honest numbers
CARAT promises no precision. Every number is as good as its source and no better, and every price on the page says which source that is. Honest numbers, not confident ones — the banker can check where each one came from.
Start with one farm.
CARAT is free for advisors. Create an account and pick your country. CARAT installs that country's price catalogue and its starter crop plans, and you can build one projection end to end before you take it to a client.
A conversation, not a presentation
A walkthrough instead of a description
Write to us and we'll walk you through a real farm's season: crop plans by crop, prices with their sources and dates, the curve month by month, and the bank package itself. Half an hour, no slides.