The future of farming is digital

This is what Silver Fern Farms’ chief supply chain officer Dan Boulton told the 700 delegates at the co-operative’s recent “Plate to Pasture” Farmer Conference in Christchurch. Boulton outlined several ways SFF would embark on “a clear digital strategy” over the next few years. He explained that it had to do so to remain relevant and connected with tomorrow’s consumers.

“We’re seeing increasing investment in digital and data from governments and big industry players right across the globe,” Boulton said.

He adds that progressive companies that recognised the value of data were investing millions.

“For context, I was recently with an unnamed global supply chain player, and they shared that their annual spend on technology this year was $1.2 billion.”

He warned it was a wake-up for everyone. “If you haven’t thought already about how you’re managing your own farm data, I really encourage you to start thinking about it.”

Boulton says SFF and its farmers would need to provide data to prove their sustainability and nature-positive attributes, to provide confidence to auditors, verifiers, retail buyers, consumers - and even to meet future market access requirements.

“We know that we need to be able to be transparent around our impact on the environment and with our verified proof points around action. We do face a systemic risk to our reputation, our brand and even access to financial capitals.”

Boulton told the audience that experts are saying that digital transformation is going to be the biggest change in supply chains since the industrial revolution. Historically, supply chains were seen as linear where product moves physically from one stage to the next.

“Today, supply chains are often described as being decentralized where the value sits in the data, and data can flow between any participant in the supply chain.”

Outlining some of the ways SFF and its partners were moving into the digital space, Boulton said Silver Fern Farms would need to retire many old systems and invest in new.

It was complex process for a business moving 140,000 livestock bookings a year, totalling five million animals across seven different stock classes and six livestock programmes with special attributes, through 14 unique processing sites with different capabilities.

Boulton showed delegates a mock-up of a new interactive booking system, which would go out to farmers in 12 to 18 months, allowing them to self-manage their livestock forecasts and match with the plants’ kill schedules.

“The plan is to integrate this directly into your farm management system or data sharing platform, allowing data to be pushed and pulled through a decentralized data platform,” he says. “This is going to be a pretty exciting when we get to a point as you get closer to the kill window, you’ll be able to update and you’ll be prompted to update your weights and your timings to confirm your forecast.”

Also, due to launch very soon is an electronic Animal Status Declaration form (ASD) – soon to become a compulsory part of traceability.

Boulton says SFF’s store stock service had grown considerably over the last three years and SFF was committed to growing it further to all parts of the country.

“We want to digitize the workflow that currently exists and we’re looking at having that in place by the end of 2023.”

The company was also working on a new directto- consumer E-commerce solution that would see SFF being seen not just as an ingredients option but provide an immersive and interactive creative experience to “savour”.

Initiatives Already Underway

Boulton also ran over a number of initiatives SFF is working on with external partners, some of which were featured in other presentations at the conference.

One was Lynker, which maps and measures carbon sequestration on farm. Boulton claims it will provide integrity to farmers’ carbon-zero claims and verify their nature-positive goals.

Another was CropX, which monitors and measures soil health with ground sensors, already installed on about 20 SFF farms.

“CropX has over 15,000 sensors in the ground worldwide. It’s a lot of data points that we can lean on,” Boulton added.

Another example he gave was SFF’s partnership with Market2x (M2X) whose transport management system has provided massive efficiency gains, It has allowed for movement of the same number of animals with 16% fewer km travelled by trucks, fewer trucks on the road, an average 12% lower emissions per stock unit, and an animal welfare benefit from 16% less time spent on trucks by the animals.

Boulton said it had reduced empty truck movements by more than 580,000 km in the first half of this year alone, he said. “And we’ve been able to pay our carriers on average – this the national average – 23% more.”

Digital Wallet

An initiative that aims to overhaul the way farmers manage all of their data, while placing control firmly in their own hands by way of a “digital wallet”, has reached the stage of seeking farmer partners to begin testing and shaping its capabilities.

Trust Alliance New Zealand (TANZ) chair Chris Claridge says it is now seeking expressions of interest from farmers willing to help assess and develop the system. Those interested can register on the Trust’s website.

“The system has reached the stage of a model ready to present to farmers, explain how it works and get their feedback on how well it solves some of their problems.”

He told Rural News the Trust wanted to hear the needs of different farming systems and was also keen to hear from groups of farmers in different catchments and regions.

Claridge said farmers are buried in red tape with constant demands for data on farm, from the private sector and public sector.

Bankers, buyers and regulators all want the same information. That information may be scattered across several databases, but Claridge claims the digital wallet will allow farmers to simplify access to it while maintaining their control over it.

He says digital wallet methodology has already been adopted overseas and it was strange that it had not been in New Zealand.

It will also test some of the assumptions TANZ has made about what farmers want, Claridge adds.