START-UP businesses are notoriously short of cash and staff but among those frustrations there are some benefits from having to be a master of everything, as Next Farm discovered last year.
Faced with those constraints Next Farm’s managing director Aaron Furrer and brand manager Sammi Stewart had to assemble 500 irrigation management control boxes that were about to go to farms for further testing.
As they methodically assembled each unit they discovered two sets of identically coloured wires, which each had a different function. Potentially, that could create confusion and reliability issues when assembled by a contractor.
Changes were made but such challenges illustrate the trials and tribulations for a small start-up company.
Furrer says Next Farm has lofty goals.
“We are shooting for the moon so that we will land in the stars.”
Next year they intend launching their farm sensor effluent and irrigation IT control systems in NZ, Australia, South America and China.
All this stems from fixing a problem for a dairy farmer to manage and control multiple sprinkler heads in a fixed-grid irrigation system.
Fixed-grid systems are permanent, static sprinkler systems usually mounted on posts set out in a grid pattern in a paddock or orchard.
Managing the systems to suit livestock or fruit management, shifting weather patterns and irrigation schedules is difficult because each head has to be adjusted individually.
“It meant everything has to be individually controlled on the day and time they want it to run and do it to every individual sprinkler.”
For some properties that can mean adjusting several hundred units.
“It’s just an assumption now that they hope they have turned them all off but there is no way of telling.”
Their solution is a cloud-based IT system called Remote Irrigation Mesh, known as RIM.
This on-farm network is run from a smartphone that also provides certainty the adjustment has been made correctly.
With a single click irrigation can be started, paused or isolated to a section of the paddock or orchard.
Stewart says the system provides information that allows farmers to meet fertiliser company guidelines, council resource consent obligations and to also work with soil moisture probes and weather stations.
Next Farm has initially targeted fixed-grid systems but is looking at other irrigation methods, except pivots, such as micro sprinklers, drip and sub-surface systems.
“Essentially, if it’s got a valve we can control it,” Stewart says.
This year there will be 3000 units going onto farms in a final test run before a commercial launch at the end of next year.
Stewart says the potential market is significant with 2.8 million hectares of irrigated agriculture and horticulture in NZ and Australia, of which 2% is fixed grid.
Next Farm has also developed a unit, Efflutrack, for effluent management.
It connects to travelling irrigators and can alert operators of any issues such as a machine not moving and can be turned off and on from a phone.
That allows an operator to make repairs without having to commute to the pump shed to turn it on then return to check it.
Similarly, it can provide proof of placement to adhere to council rules, show effluent has not been applied near waterways or as part of nutrient or fertiliser management.
Both Stewart and Furrer have farming backgrounds and say they are aware of the needs of the sector.
Furrer says farmers do not need more data but a process that manages information and allows farmers to make decisions as they run their properties.
Importantly, that information must be discernible and understandable for those aged over 55, given the aging population of farmers.
Furrer has previously worked in Silicon Valley where he described money for start-up IT companies as unbelievable compared to the restrained capital available here.
Next Farm has 13 shareholders and has worked with Callaghan Innovation on product development and received some funding grants.
It has been generating income for the last two years and Furrer says new investors are looking at the business, which will help take it to the next stage.
That will create jobs for two or three more staff in the coming year and pay for a contractor to construct the units.
