Tim Neale, Managing Director Thousands of years ago, when woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers roamed the earth, we lived as hunter-gatherers, traveling from place to place in search of food. As time passed, we developed the skill of cultivating and began putting down roots in small settlements, which later sparked the first flames of civilization. Thus, agriculture fueled the rise of human society and empowered us to flourish across the continents.
Fast forward to today’s age of technology; agriculture is still the key source of livelihood across the world. However, with the rapid growth of the human population, it is becoming all-important to increase agricultural productivity to meet demands while minimizing wastage of land and produce. Realizing this, Peta and Tim Neale, two Australian precision agricultural specialists, began their efforts to revitalize the agricultural industry with the help of the latest technologies. They fostered strong partnerships with major stakeholders for over 20 years, which finally culminated in the launch of DataFarming, a fast-rising precision agriculture company.
The underlying motivation of DataFarming is to overcome the barriers of technological adoption in agribusiness. According to the founders of DataFarming, complex and hard-to-use technology has always had very low adoption rates.
Unlike most AgTech companies that are rolling out platforms based on big data, DataFarming believes that rather than bombarding farmers with information and adding more complications into their life, agricultural technology should make their work easier than it was before. Also, the information collected on-site needs to be simple to interpret and should promote informed decision-making. Driven by this goal, the company has developed integrated, easy-touse, and intelligent precision farming solutions. Leveraging the power of spatial data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), DataFarming is successfully unraveling the intricacies of agricultural technology and providing users with simple and intuitive cloud-based solutions.
In 2017, the company launched its cloud-based platform, Digital Agronomist, to deliver site-specific data to its clients. Since then, it has augmented the solution with additional tools. The Digital Agronomist platform now features several payper-use premium functionalities, including real-time crop health assessments, yield maps, variable rate prescriptions, and other key datasets. As it stands, using the current industry software to achieve these tasks is tedious, often requiring specialized knowledge. However, the Digital Agronomist addresses this issue by facilitating simple, one-step solutions in a user-friendly format whenever required. By providing access to automated precision agriculture data, the platform enables strategic soil and crop sampling in identified zones, seasonal forecasts, and in-crop monitoring and alerting.
Alongside, DataFarming showcases another enterprisegrade platform, Agri-Intelligence, which is designed for larger companies and industry partners. With this solution, DataFarming takes accurate, paddock level data, and turns it into industry-level insights. DataFarming also partners with leaders in research, commercial business, and technology development to derive relevant data and automate it with AI, before delivering real-time answers to users via Agri-Intelligence. Coupled with that, the company is seeking to bolster the platform by adding new functionalities, including region-wide crop identification, pest and disease incidence and distribution, seasonal forecasts, real-time crop monitoring, and automated paddock drawing.
The rapid growth of DataFarming is indeed fueled by its state-of-the-art platforms, but the critical factor that sets the company apart is its skilled team of software developers, field technicians, and consultants. Led by the industry pioneers Tim and Peta Neale, DataFarming’s motivated workforce is striving every day to assist farmers, agronomists, and industry players in deriving measurable value from spatial data. The company is committed to empowering the next generation of agricultural leaders in the coming years, and thus, boosting the adoption of precision agriculture technology. For DataFarming, the sky is the limit when it comes to equipping farmers with the best solutions and empowering them to make the best decisions.