Farm technology

Do you have a daily struggle with black spots (no cellphone coverage) slowing down your progress? Are you spending hours in the office at night and on the weekends you’d rather not? A Canterbury ultrasound scanner showcases how Starlink Mini has transformed his life.

A recent upgrade using AI means Techion’s FECPAK platform can provide farmers with faecal egg count test results within minutes of submitting samples.

Now you have WiFi in your yards! It’s time to leave work at work, avoiding the need to bring the weigh scale unit home at night to upload. View your cameras on an entrance to tell you the truck is coming, then file your Electronic ASD forms as the truck drives away.

Imagine being able to log on and check the fuel tank but see if the pivot is still turned on in the background, and that the trough isn’t leaking. Land Watch are rapidly growing eyes for farmers in more places than the back of their head!

From data-driven decision making to environmental monitoring and compliance, Richard and Annabelle Subtil have reaped the rewards of lucrative supply contracts by being able to prove any claim while maintaining traditional high-country values. Words Sarah Perriam-Lampp Photos Elle Perriam

We improved horsepower by fuelling it with diesel rather than hay. We mechanised blade-shearing and hand-milking with electricity in the woolshed and milking shed. Every advancement in farming history has resulted in a productivity gain from a new source. The next shift is fully connected farms.

Dani Darke lives and farms with her husband Anthony and their three daughters on their sheep and beef farm in Aria, the King Country.

The big craze over how technology and AI will drive the next wave of productivity gains in farming isn’t slowing down. Off the back of Tony Leggett’s feature on improvements in tech in the Summer issue of Country-Wide, Rebecca Greaves and Sarah Perriam-Lampp discuss where the biggest opportunities lie, the barriers to adoption—particularly cost—and the importance of understanding the value behind tech investment.

Kiwi farmers are some of the most sustainably efficient in the world but with the next chapter in New Zealand farming about ‘proving your improvements’, many Trev farmers are finding enhancing business efficiency in the process. Words Sarah Perriam-Lampp.

Lifting the price of wool, the benefits of deferred grazing and capturing money left on the table from everyday tools - Sarah Perriam-Lampp was roving around Fieldays to capture yarns reflecting the opportunities in front of us today.

She checked out some exciting announcements for farmers across New Zealand: outdoor clothing company Stoney Creek’s pledge to pay farmers more for their wool; a new deferred grazing study from AgResearch; and innovations in animal management with Gallagher.