AGTRAC - smart farming

Customer Profile:
Glendhu Station is currently owned by Bob and Pam McRae who have lived on the station since Bob’s parents Ian and Mazy McRae purchased the property in 1969.

Bob and Pam have 3 children John, Anna and Kirsten. John, wife Emily and recent addition to the McRae family “10 month old Robert” now manage the property.

Glendhu Station carries 4500 ewes comprised of North Island Romney genetics with a lambing percentage of 130% to the ram to include 2ths. In the past five years all lambs have been sold store with 1500 ewe lambs wintered, 500 culled and sold in the spring with the balance entering the mob as ewe replacements. Glendhu station also carries 400 M/A Hereford cows with some 1^st cross angus/Hereford cows kept for trait comparison on growth rates, progeny meat yield and cow survivability. Due to feed availability over the winter all calves to date have been sold store in last 3 years.

The Station is made up of 350 ha’s of flats, 600 ha’s of rolling hill country and 1500 ha’s in steep to moderate hill country with some 350 ha’s ineffective to include D.O.C covenants and bluff areas. The size, altitude, typography, access and general nature of Glendhu Station lends itself ideally to proving a strong economic show case in providing how a low input sustainable productive system could be run on a large scale.

Glendhu Stations objective is to farm a quality, high yielding, sustainable product aimed at the growing organics consumer market.

Our focus in the past eighteen months has been to move into a Biogro Certified Farming System with a strong focus on genetics, farm sustainability and the reduction of conventional chemical inputs.

Business Situation
Our main challenge was to change our mindset from being focused on a high input / high yielding production model and to gain further knowledge of what key drivers were required to ensure the economic returns for our product met market requirements and farm sustainability. We found when entering into the Biogro certified farming system we needed to understand how our scale would be able to suit such a system, further understand what key information was required to meet the certification and how we manage the process to integrate any additional compliance into our day to day farming policies.

We required a system that could measure not only stock performance but also analyze this against financial performance in other areas of our business.

Another challenge was our limitations around the use of software programs, computers and understood to take full advantage of new technologies we needed to work with a company which would understand our business and assist us in achieving our goals.

SOLUTION
A discussion with Agtrac at an RFID fielday held on our property in early 2007 introduced me to “FarmHQ” a product designed to help link what happens on farm and measure this against how you are performing financially as a business. In order to develop a path forward Agtrac provided their expertise to put together a system based on using RFID “electronic identification” to help better understand the performance traits both at a mob and individual animal level using our own assessments of what Glendhu’s requirements were to achieve the outcomes required. This required FarmHQ software, Scales, RFID ear tags and utilizing an existing sheep handling system already used on the property. We could see the investment was paying for its self almost immediately as to do this manually with out some type of system would have seen this as impossible.

We have been weighing every month and the information now being received is invaluable EG: We have currently set up a mating list of the sheep based on their ability to maintain body weight without being propped up by certain inputs. This is just the start of how we can monitor and select stock that will survive under organic certification. Other positives will be fertility info, animal health tracking, better ram selection and FEC measuring for worm resistance at an “almost commercial stud capability”

An addition to the farm production part of the program the financials can be managed within “FarmHQ” linked to the banklink import which is supported by our accountant. I believe this will have a number of additional spin offs as we progress.

THE BENEFITS
While it is too early to list true production benefits, the shift has given us a new focus and a direction to work towards. It is important to note my workload has been made easier and has not increased anytime spent in the office but has only changed in the type information recorded. Once we set our final targets we see Agtrac and the FarmHQ system dramatically decreasing our work load in the first instance by simply helping us identify the right type of sheep for our environment.

REPORTS
The flexible reporting system is fantastic and the Agtrac team has been helpful with getting any information required in an easy to understand format. In addition to the reporting Agtrac have helped with the integration and ongoing support with the RFID “electronic Identification” technology used to manage the system and create the draft files required when I need them, thereby removing any barriers around having to use computers.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT
This simply boils down to the fact that if you tried to manually record the type of information we are collecting it would be cost prohibited. The cost of time, labor, tedious work hours and manual mistakes would see it go into the too hard basket. The FarmHQ system allows you instant access to objective information available for you or any professional adviser to help assist your business i.e. your accountant, consultant or vet.

What you get:
ü Business planning
ü Farm management planning
ü Traceability
ü Performance recording
ü Customized reports
ü Great service
ü New ideas
ü Return on money and time invested
ü Computer & RFID expertise

“I would not hesitate to recommend them to my farming peers or associates as they have helped me greatly”.