Crop harvest timer

A timer is used to determine whether a component (usually an Activity) can perform its task in the current time-step (see Using timers).

This timer allows associated components to perform tasks based on the current date in relation to the next harvest of a crop. For example, irrigation may take place from planting (6 months before harvest) up until 1 month before harvest.

The timer can only be associated with Crop task activity and Crop fee activity components and it will use the harvest details of the parent Manage crop product component.

The following parameters are used to define this activity

Offset months start

Offset (in months) from the next harvest to perform the activity.

A negative value represents months before harvest, 0 is at harvest, and a positive value represents months after harvest.

Required

Offset months stop

Offset (in months) from the next harvest to stop performing the activity.

A negative value represents months before harvest, 0 is at harvest, and a positive value represents months after harvest.

Required

The following components will add additional functionality to this activity

Sequence timer

A Sequence timer provided as a child of this timer will allow you to specify a further, repeating sequence that determines in which months of the specified range the timer will be allowed.

This allows a single crop task with associated labour and finance to be performed with greater precision between the two ends of this harvest range. For example, if you only needed to apply irrigation on the 4th, 2nd and 1st month before harvest you could apply a Harvest timer from -4 to -1 months with a Sequence timer of 1011 to a single Crop task activity and avoid having to duplicate components in the simulation tree.

The following status values apply to this activity and are shown in Activities performed report:

	blank	The timer was not active in this time-step
	not needed	This timer was enabled but another process (such as Sequence timer) prevented the timer
	success	The timer was successful allowing all associated activities to be performed