Greenstalk makes old farm machinery ‘smart’

A Norfolk software company is collaborating with farms to make the equipment they have used for decades digitally intelligent – increasing productivity and saving farmers from having to spend thousands of pounds on expensive new machinery.

Greenstalk, which is based in Loddon near Norwich, is working with farming businesses in Norfolk and Suffolk to revolutionise their existing machines – from weighbridges to production lines – so the output of multiple elements can be monitored and tracked on one software platform via a mobile device.

It was a chance conversation about a broken bird scarer that led to David Aarons, managing director of Greenstalk, working with the farming sector, having achieved a string of national and international awards for innovation and technology design during his career.

Ian Field, from Raveningham Estate farms in Norfolk said: “I was in the workshop fiddling around with an old gas gun bird scarer which was proving to be a challenge. Quite by chance David Aarons called in for a social visit and was very interested in what the problem was and, as always, he went away and came back with a host of ideas.”

What evolved from that meeting was a collaboration that has transformed elements of Raveningham’s business.

Greenstalk has worked with the farm’s managers to retro-fit monitors to a range of equipment including irrigation pumps and grain stores, enabling the Raveningham team to monitor power usage and efficiency via Greenstalk’s web-based software platform.

Farm manager Wayne Beales said: “Previously we were reliant on checking in person to see that everything was working correctly. With the monitors fitted, we now have access to all the information from those assets on one dashboard and we can see instantly if there’s a problem and deal with it.”

Ian Field said: “David and his team are very capable of turning an unsatisfactory situation into a viable success. They always ask ‘what do want it to do or be?’, rather than saying ‘this is what we have and this is what you need’.”

At Frederick Hiam’s farm at Brandon Fields in Suffolk, Greenstalk installed sensors to an old weighbridge which now photographs and records the details of vehicles arriving on site and analyses the weight, type and condition of the load. The system uses existing CCTV cameras with bespoke software that can also monitor the vehicle throughout its time on site.

Managing Director Jamie Lockhart said: “I had spoken to other companies about upgrading the weighbridge and they said we would need to buy a new one at a significant cost, but I knew David had clever ways of making machines talk to each other, so I shared what we wanted to achieve.

“We were having to do everything manually and no one knew what was on site until a ticket was delivered to the relevant person. Now we know, as soon as something arrives, what the load is and how much there is – and we haven’t had to spend a whole load of money on new cameras. We get instant recognition that it’s the right vehicle in the right place at the right time.”

Other innovations at Brandon Fields include digitally monitoring the power usage of production lines which removes the need to produce spreadsheets to analyse results, and creating a geofence around the farm’s fuel tanks to protect them from theft. CCTV cameras now trigger a recording 30 seconds before any vehicle enters or leaves the fuel area, preventing the need to review hours of footage if an incident occurs.

David Aarons said: “At Greenstalk, our vision has always been to build the solutions farmers need, from the ground up, by listening to their needs and adapting our technology to suit. Enabling devices, sensors and platforms to talk to each other helps farmers to manage their operations more efficiently, monitor crop health in real-time, and make data-driven decisions.

“Many people are nervous of investing in new technology, but this is different – it’s about making existing machinery smarter and more efficient and it’s something we can apply to so many applications, which is what makes it so exciting.”

Brandon Fields and Raveningham Estates both continue to work with Greenstalk to explore additional ways to introduce new technology to their businesses.

Jamie Lockhart said: “It’s great for us because we can develop the technology to be exactly how we want it to be and we can redeploy it on other machines to monitor other things, like the output from our packing machines, or the amount of rejected produce. It has been a breath of fresh air and the sort of thinking we want to engage with because, as an industry we are fed up with people selling us the dream and then we buy the reality, and the reality is somewhat disappointing. We are not in the dreams business.”

Greenstalk is a trading brand of Select Software, creating technology from the ground up.

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