TASMANIAN farming contractor and manager Joe Cook grows broccoli and cauliflower for leading Australian food manufacturer, Simplot.
As one of the company's farming partners in the vegetable growing heartland of the state's north west, his operations produce 7000 tonnes of vegetables, grown on multiple sites spread over a 200 kilometre radius, with extra land leased from local owners in addition to his own.
Within his office near Devonport, Mr Cook is weighing up what the real advantages are of moving to a fully integrated cloud-based system.
With him is Rob Wade from SprayerBarn Tasmania, sole distributor for Ag Leader products in the state, who credits Mr Cook with being one of the most advanced AgFiniti users in Australia, well-placed to talk about the productivity gains and efficiencies the platform can bring to vegetable cropping.
RELATED READING
"It's by far the best platform for querying spatial data, and you end up with this layer of historical data covering your entire operation," Mr Cook said.
Initially he suspected that AgFiniti, was developed for a commodity other than vegetable crops, like so many other ag-technology platforms.
Two years ago and already a convert to Ag Leader's SMS Software, he took advantage of the option to have a "free play" with the AgFiniti cloud based system, and quickly saw that it was a more relevant fit than expected.
AgFiniti asserts itself in driving efficiency from the word go. After a first pass with a tractor to strip-till ground, Mr Cook uses the platform to transfer steering guidance lines to any other vehicle working on that paddock.
Two years ago, things were very different.
"I'd be putting a USB in the computer, copying the guidance lines, then hopping in the ute and driving to the planter tractors to transfer them over," he said.
Now, the data can be transferred instantly from his desktop.
"That's a really big efficiency gain," he said.
From that first pass with a tractor onwards, AgFiniti continues to build the layers of data.
Where previously Mr Cook was using various apps to create rudimentary maps of paddocks, he now has a satellite view overlaid with data, cataloguing every pass to plant, fertilise, spray and harvest the crop.
Stored by AgFiniti in the cloud, collected and available in real-time, it forms a databank of operations on every paddock which can be used to guide operations day-to-day, as well as analyse and plan for the future.
A key feature, says Mr Cook, is that Ag Leader has kept it simple and easy to use.
He said AgFiniti is the most user-friendly platform he's come across.
Mr Cook's a big advocate of Ag Leader's SMS software and it's clear that AgFiniti has added a whole new layer of sophisticated data control to his operations.
With real-time operational capacities, traceability, historical data to base judgement on, Mr Cook said it's the he right fit for vegetable cropping and a really powerful product.
- Copy by Ag Leader.