The Farmote system validates satellite images against ground-based measurements, ensuring a high level of accuracy, founder Richard Barton says.
Despite how critical it is to know how much grass a dairy farm is growing, the means of assessing that have changed little over the past generation. But with farms getting larger, and time shorter, Richard Barton believed there had to be a better way. He spoke to Richard Rennie about Farmote Systems.
Of all the dairy farm jobs that need to be done over springtime, dry matter measurement takes the most time on a big dairy farm and is critical to ensure cows are fed well and genuine surpluses identified for harvesting.
Mechanical engineer Richard Barton returned to his native Canterbury in 2016 after a long stint overseas, with that seasonal challenge playing on his mind.
An earlier visit home and conversation with a farming family had him thinking about applying his medical engineering experience to watching the grass grow.
“It struck me that farmers had invested millions in buying farms, yet had only a pretty average idea about how much grass that investment was growing and it was their most important feed source,” Barton said.
He decided to apply his experience with accurate remote sensors used in pharmaceutical engineering to measuring grass growth 24/7 remotely.
It required him to combine five areas of cutting-edge technology, including the sensors, solar power, batteries and stock-proof design to create an automated, in-paddock pasture monitoring system.
The system is a blend of terrestrial and extraterrestrial vision.
It couples ground-based grass growth sensors with a network of low-orbit satellites capable of taking pastoral images every few days as they pass overhead.
Those images are integrated with data collected from the paddock by the remote meters, which effectively calibrate detected pasture to a data figure.
“There are systems that will only use satellite images to determine grass cover,” he said.
“However, they are vulnerable to variation in light levels and cloud cover. Having ground-based remote monitoring ensures the images are related back to what is happening in the paddock; the satellite can rank the paddocks because they can ‘see’ the entire paddock, but the monitors mean a dry matter value can be assigned to what it is seeing.”
Rather than requiring an individual remote monitor in every paddock, the system will typically rely upon five monitors or “motes” per farm.
The more motes there are in any one area across several farms, the greater the reference monitoring base for comparing against the satellite images.
One of the toughest challenges in developing the system lay firmly in the paddock.
He says trying to design a mote that was cow-proof proved to be tough and took two years.
Bored cows had plenty of time between milkings to rub, scratch, stomp and ultimately break the monitors if they were not built tough enough.
The poles contain solar-powered electronics and sensors found in cellphones, with prongs anchoring them to the ground that measure soil moisture and temperature.
The other challenge was to ensure the electronics would work regardless of conditions.
This was an area he had experience in, having designed and fine-tuned lifesaving technology, including tiny platinum coils to treat brain aneurysms.
Once calibrated with satellite images, the data feeds back to farmers’ smartphones or PCs, presenting a feed wedge profile of the farm, ranking paddocks in terms of cover, and providing pasture growth rate data.
“We can see the potential to add more management features and for integration into other feed management systems,” he said.
The system was extensively trialled in commercial conditions, with Lincoln University contributing to trial work, while backing has come from commercial and private investors in New Zealand and overseas.
Covid put paid to Chinese manufacture and has since seen many of the components and assembly carried out in NZ.
With its commercial launch focusing on Canterbury dairy units to begin with, Barton says interest has been particularly strong around Mid Canterbury, with several farms in the Hinds district already online.
The satellite imagery coupled with the ground-based motes provide “pixels” of pasture data covering nine square metres.
“So, it is quite possible to identify not only what paddocks have more feed in them, but what part of what paddocks have the greater feed level, possibly influenced by fertility, irrigation or where cows have been standing,” he said.
Ultimately, he can see the potential for the data to provide “big picture” imagery of a region’s grass growth, helping identify impending seasonal shortages and possibly as an early warning for issues like drought.
The system is based on a subscription rate that includes all the hardware, installation and software for interpreting it at a farm level.
The next step will be to get his developers looking at how the tech can be adapted to more extensive sheep and beef farms that have more challenging monitoring landscapes.
“But the need is just as great. On those bigger farms it can be hard to know exactly what sort of feed cover you have at the very back of the farm unless you go there,” he said.
He is also excited about the potential to integrate his remote tech with the equally groundbreaking technology used in remote cow management systems like Halter, where farmers can set virtual feed breaks without needing fences to define grazing areas.
While a long way from lifesaving human medical tech, Barton says as with that technology it is satisfying to be making a difference to farmers’ lives, making a vital task simpler.
“I get a lot of satisfaction in creating something that will help make growing food more efficient,” he said.
