Farmote founder Richard Barton has welcomed the additional funding from two backers with multi-national connections.
Canterbury-based remote grass monitoring company Farmote has had a boost in its funding, thanks to investment from agritech company Gallaghers and seed company the Royal Barenbrug Group.
The $750,000 injection aims to fund wider farm rollout of the remote monitoring technology that uses in-paddock recorders to measure grass, calibrated through low orbit satellite connectivity.
A typical farm setup will have five of the monitors allocated across it and the system now covers about 6000ha of largely dairy land in Canterbury.
Farmote founder Richard Barton said the additional funding allows the company to extend its services beyond Canterbury to other parts of New Zealand and to recruit staff to accelerate the rollout process.
He intends to take the technology to Europe in 2023.
A mechanical engineer, Barton founded Farmote five years ago on returning to NZ and being struck by the average means Kiwi farmers had at hand to assess pasture dry matter.
He decided to apply his experience with accurate remote sensors used in pharmaceutical engineering to measure grass growth 24/7 remotely. The design combines five areas of cutting-edge technology, including sensors, solar power, batteries and stock proof design, to create the in-paddock pasture monitoring system.
Early backing for the project had come from Barenbrug and Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1 investment company.
Gallagher’s global GM Lisbeth Jacobs said the agritech company has been seeking out technology like Farmote, particularly after acquiring virtual fencing company Agersens.
She said the data generated by Farmote is valuable in itself and the gain for farmers lies in integrating it with other tech that enables remote monitoring in real-time.
Satellite imagery used for pasture dry matter estimation is not new, but is fraught with issues around light levels and cloud.
Farmote’s ground-based sensors calibrate the satellite images against actual growth in paddocks, with the satellite then capable of ranking paddocks in terms of pasture levels.
Once calibrated, the data is fed back to farmer cellphone or PC, presenting a feed wedge profile of the farm, ranking paddocks in terms of cover and providing pasture growth rate data.
Barenbrug global head John Thijssen said satellite systems cannot tell the difference in absolute numbers between how much grass is growing in one paddock compared to another.
“Farmote is the only one that has spent the time and money developing an on-ground sensor to ensure grass height in absolute terms and integrated that with satellite imagery,” Thijssen said.
He could see potential for the application of the technology in Western Europe particularly.
