Ballance invests to help customers farm smarter

Ballance invests to help customers farm smarter

Ballance Agri-Nutrients is taking a majority shareholding in Farmworks Systems Ltd and will be adding the company's on-line farm information and management tools, known as Ag-Hub, to the products and services Ballance sells to farmers.

Ag-Hub (http://www.aghub.co.nz) is an online tool which enables farmers to capture, store and analyse information across farm management systems and is linked to GPS maps of farm properties.

Ballance Chief Executive, Larry Bilodeau, said today the investment in a 51 percent shareholding was an exciting expansion into the technology fields supporting New Zealand's leading agriculture industry, and a further step forward on the co-operative's path to help customers farm more productively, more sustainably, more simply and more profitably.

'The most productive farms are those where the farmers are making good decisions across a whole range of areas. These decisions need to be based on reliable information specific to the farm, and that information needs to be gathered from a variety of sources.

'Ag-Hub provides a very efficient way to capture all this information and to analyse and apply it. That's especially important when you are managing larger scale operations involving several farms, sometimes in different locations. We're seeing increasing demand for tools which make it easier to make the best choice for each property so the business as a whole achieves the best production. Ag-Hub does that.'

Mr Bilodeau said farming operations were also under increasing pressure to demonstrate compliance with regional council regulations. Ballance sees Ag-Hub as a further means to help customers meet regulatory requirements in areas like nutrient management.

Ag-Hub works by capturing information from on-farm recording devices such as feed readers, effluent irrigators, moisture tapes and weather stations. Most of these are made available from equipment and applications developed by Farmworks Systems. This information is transmitted to Ag-Hub through their wireless farm network, FarmNet.

Farmers can use the tool to generate reports on things such as pasture cover, yield mapping, fertiliser requirements, water usage, soil moisture and temperature, effluent nutrients, application rates, weather and animal weights. Future applications include measuring fertiliser performance against soil test information and fertiliser recommendations.

In addition to capturing information on-farm, Ag-Hub enables information to be fed into other online tools, such as the industry recognised nutrient management tool Overseer.

Operating as an open-industry portal, Ag-Hub enables other companies to build and host their applications, as well as link to other sites, so that the farmer does not have to go into multiple sites to view information relevant to that industry. Ag-Hub also offers industry transparency to stakeholders who are authorised by the farm owner, such as consultants and investors, as to what is happening on the property, and can be viewed in real time from anywhere with internet access.

'The system enables farmers to get as much information from a wide range of sources and use it in a way that's best for their operation, their management systems and their production goals,' said Mr Bilodeau.

The existing owners and developers of Farmworks Systems and AgHub will continue to hold a significant stake in the business and will work with Ballance to continue to advance the technology. Farmworks Systems will continue to operate out of Feilding selling farm-based solutions.
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