Rupert Harlow is Relationship Manager at YAGRO, pioneers in the development of analytics for agriculture. YAGRO released a ground-breaking new product in 2020 that aggregates on-farm business data into a simple online tool, and gives the farm manager incredible detail and insight on the farm’s current and historical performance.
The theme of the REAP conference is time; Rupert explains why this topic is so relevant to YAGRO.
“Farms have got a huge amount of data coming from various sources – their farm management software, accounts packages, sales contracts, labour and machinery details ranging from what is spent on each bit of kit, through to how many man hours it takes to get a field drilled up.
What we do is collate as much of this information as possible into one place, from all of these sources – at the moment that includes ‘variable inputs’, so that’s seeds, fertilisers and sprays, and then it includes sales data as well. This gives the farmer an overview of what’s happening on the farm. And understand ‘this is where I ought to spend my time looking’.
Within our Analytics system, farms can compare themselves against the averages from our dataset of other farms, so they can see if what they’re spending their time and money on is in line with others. We also have Virtual Groups, where a farmer can get together directly with another farm and compare their data. This works like a LinkedIn or Facebook request – where one side asks to connect with the other, and if the other accepts, the data will be shared between the two.
We’ve got a case study of a farmer we worked with who is spraying 17% less and drilling 40% less than nearby farms without seeing a reduction in yield – now each farmer is an expert on their own farm, so if they then speak to each other and share that knowledge, that’s got to the best way of farms all progressing.”
REAP 2021: Changing Time(s) for Agriculture – 10th November 2021
Imagine a world where agriculture is not constrained by time. The ability to manage and manipulate time is increasing and REAP 2021 will explore the advances in technology and breakthroughs in science that is making this possible.
REAP brings together people from across the agri-tech ecosystem who believe that innovation is the engine for change. The conference bridges the gap between producer needs and technology solutions and showcases exciting agri-tech start-ups.