Friday, March 29, 2024

Kiwi farmers becoming data savvy

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In the precarious farm software business world Andrew Cooke can claim to be a seasoned veteran, marking the 12th year of Rezare Systems at Ruakura’s Innovation Park.
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Like its managing director, Rezare has proved to be something of a constant, quiet achiever, leading the pastoral sector on several key initiatives, particularly around the development of a national stock identification system, now known as NAIT.

This is in a sector where often each new piece of technology is hyped to be the next big thing only to stall on its launch pad, sometimes for good, sometimes until the industry catches up.

Cloud software, the internet of things and more recently artificial intelligence have been the most recent developments, all with equal amounts of hype supporting them.

But Cooke and his IT team have managed to weave elements of such new technology into their developments without straying from the mandate that it must capture the specific needs of farmers in a user-friendly, adaptable manner.

Rezare identified early on the key barrier to technology uptake was the need to capture data manually in the field. Being unable to do so required it to be reloaded onto computers in the evening, one of the biggest issues farmers have about any software programme.

But combining smart systems with mobile data collection opened a host of mobile projects with the latest being the launch of the company’s Pure Farming animal management software.

It targets farmers wanting to improve the genetic performance of their flock or herd, linking directly into the Sheep Improvement database.

It also enables farmers on premium supply programmes to capture their farm management practices for full traceability and verification.

A supporter of a move to a brand-NZ certification, Cooke says his company’s software and systems are the nuts and bolts of the romanticised brand story NZ might want to tell.

“We have what are known as credence attributes that consumers attach to a product.

“They include what ingredients are in food, how animals are treated, where the ingredients are sourced.

“The ability to track and trace all those puts the numbers and integrity behind any claims made about those attributes.”

He points to businessman Seth Godin book, All marketers are liars – the power of telling authentic stories in a low trust world, as a seminal example of how consumers crave a good story to their product but will bite back hard should they find that story is in any way compromised or untrue.

“So you tell your story and you do your utmost to back it up and that is where we see all this data come in.”

But greater data flows also work in building farmer-processor relationships, as much as consumer-brand relationships.

“Having that transparency in the supply chain, that means if the processor is able to pass data back to the farmer we can start doing some good supply chain forecasting, estimating what market demand is and letting farmers know if stock is needed sooner or if they should hang onto it for longer.”

Cooke describes selling software to farmers as a hard grind, characterised by a number of small, one-man companies managing to scrape a living with their long-time base of core clients.

But he maintains a key reason Rezare has flourished is by aligning with agri companies with the scale to amortise the cost of new software systems across multiple users and that has included genetics, fertiliser and processing companies over the years.

The company has managed to take the lead in major projects across the pastoral sector including underpinning the Farmax software used for feed budgeting, dairy industry technology initiatives and sheep and beef tech programmes.

The Pure Farming app is typical of the model, presently run through Gallagher’s dashboard system and capable of being bolted onto other data collection systems.

The internet of things has been one of the next big things touted in the tech sector but Cooke says there are a few more years to come before it matures into a technology that will operate seamlessly between machines.

Meantime, Cooke cautions NZ’s pastoral sector needs to watch its risk profile if it drags its feet on technology uptake.

“We are getting technology uptake, albeit from a relatively low base but my concern is how that compares to the uptake by sectors like the corn or soy sector in the United States or the Israeli dairy industry – the technology only makes them more and more competitive against us.”

Kiwi farmers are, however, becoming more data savvy and aware their enterprises generate significant amounts of data.

Cooke was a key mover behind the Farm Data Code of Practice that gives endorsed companies approval on their data terms and conditions, in turn giving farmers peace of mind their data is not being misused.

For Cooke, the challenge in coming years as data and technology blossoms is not in getting IT staff but getting IT staff with a firm understanding of farming systems.

“It’s being able to get people who can understand the science and the systems who can read scientific papers and convert it all into code.”

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