This year’s Mystery Creek Fieldays was dominated by the usual swathe of latest hardware for farm use but agri-tech companies reported farmers most interested in technology to help them generate greater profits from more stripped down, pasture-focused systems.
That was also being pushed harder by regulatory requirements around animal identification and environmental controls, both requiring better technology to keep operations compliant.
Gallagher marketing manager Mark Harris said farmers were scrutinising technology closer, looking for the key value proposition it offered.
“They will ask you if you offer a solution to a problem they put a value on.
“Regulation is also driving that adaptation and the best example of that is the NAIT requirement. Since that has come in farmers are looking at where they can get the maximum advantage from.”
Despite tighter dairy budgets Gallaghers’ highest sales had come from dairy regions as farmers tightened feed management and better use of low-cost grass pasture.
Investment in the company’s relatively low-cost solar powered portable technology and a sharpening up of grass management skills were means to make some quick gains on a tight budget.
That also matched the slide in spending on supplements over the past two seasons.
DairyNZ data indicated bought-in supplements had dropped from a high of $1.60/kg MS in 2013-14 to $1.39/kg MS and indications were it had fallen well below $1/kg for the 2016-17 season.
Harris attributed part of the company’s strong early sales of its new touch-screen weigh scales to farmers upgrading equipment almost made redundant by wireless connectivity, touch-screen interfaces and greater portability.
Major advances in technology in only the past two to three years made that move easier.
“That early tech could be a bit clunky and usually only appealed to those early adopters who put up with that.”
“We have units now that can not only record data but can also produce reports in the field – if there is one thing farmers hate it is having to go back to data on their PC to understand it. This technology enables them to record, analyse and make decisions on the spot, on the day and the job is done.”
The need to optimise decision-making was driving suppliers to adapt to farming’s 24/7 operating demands.
Ballance used Mystery Creek to showcase a model of a remote operated urea silo that did not require staff to operate. It let farmers or contractors load up at any time after ordering over the web.
Ballance supply chain analyst Craig Fitzpatrick said farmers could ensure a timely application for maximum crop yield while contractors could maximise their machinery investment over the short window seasonal demands often presented.
Milking machine company DeLaval acknowledged a step back from the “bleeding edge” technology that characterised much of the industry’s new dairy designs in recent years.
Launching its new E100 rotary system the company had sought to simplify and consolidate on existing technology and hardware.
That included designing it around the needs of pastoral farmers here rather than making an imported design fit for NZ systems.
“We have had a lot of conversations with farmers today about going back to basics. The industry may have missed a trick in recent years as it has expanded, adding a lot of new staff but not always getting the basics in place before bringing in new technology as well,” DeLaval Oceania manager Justin Thompson said.
The biggest need now was for companies like his that supplied the technology to continue working with farmers after the sale, helping them interpret and manage the megabytes of data generated, delivering a better return than they would have without it.
