Joe Larre, a northwest Saskatchewan farmer who does not write code, joins Dan Aberhart for a live briefing on Joe’s Farm Brain, the farm portal he built by talking to Claude Code. Dan walks through it on screen: real-time grain inventory, budget against actuals, contract deliveries, equipment maintenance, a crew daily report and a customer log, each with access set by person. Joe is plain about what was hard: the part that runs without a babysitter took the longest, it drifts, and his team is still adopting it. Producers will take away what a working farm system looks like, which jobs to automate first, and the security questions to ask before building their own.
Joe wanted his farm’s information out of his head and in one place, and eventually something he could hand to the next generation. Since this summer he has built it by talking to Claude Code, with no coding. Dan shares Joe’s portal on screen, so listeners on audio only will miss some of the visuals.
The portal reads load check-ins from grain company portals and takes each load out of inventory. It also tracks budget against actuals, contract deliveries, equipment service and a daily crew report. Joe set it up so a son or a crew member sees only the pages they have been given.
The second half covers the hard parts. The process that runs without a babysitter took the most training, and Joe went from eleven agents down to one main agent. A viewer asks who reviews AI-built code for security, and Joe says it has only been checked through the AI, so Dan points to the “doomsday file” idea and a security routine for the next cohort.
Key Topics
• Building a farm portal by talking to Claude Code, with no coding
• Real-time grain inventory, budget against actuals, and contract tracking
• Access by person, and a daily report that replaces chasing the crew
• Why one main agent replaced eleven, and why automation drifts
• Security and review of AI-built systems
Resources Mentioned
• Claude Code
• John Deere Operations Center (the one connection Joe built through an API)
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