FarmIQ Adds Value To Compliance

The demands on farmers to become more compliant have grown significantly in only five short years, with expectations from the public, processors and government all requiring greater accountability for how resources of land, water and people are managed.

Regardless of what government is running New Zealand, it is more likely than not the regulations proposed or in place around water and land management are not going to change significantly. New Zealand’s need to stake its reputation as a food producer delivering high quality, sustainable products requires regulatory effort to deliver on that promise.

As the demands around compliance have grown, the ability to capture data that proves a farmer is compliant in areas of environmental management, health and safety and ultimately green-house gas emissions has never been greater.

Smartphones, apps, sensors and wireless connectivity mean the modern farm is a rich vein of data. However, the challenge is to harvest this data and turn it into auditable, functional proof of compliance.

The ultimate solution to data overload is for New Zealand agriculture to have a common platform for collecting, analysing and presenting all this data in a form proving farmers are compliant, and also adds more profit to their business operation.

For this reason, FarmIQ stands out as the strongest candidate for a national farm reporting platform, delivering analysis, compliance, and quality assurance.

The platform puts the farmer at the centre of their business’s data flow, with data for each farm input and resource all linking up. This is unlike many systems where connections tend to be an “up-down” vertical relationship, siloing other farm inputs.

FarmIQ’s functionality include its capability to generate compliant reports such as Farm Environment Plans (FEP)s, which will be compulsory for all farms by 2025.

FarmIQ’s comprehensive FEP template links digital maps, paddock diaries, fertiliser, and stock history among other inputs into an easy to follow, useful and compliant FEP format.

Some major players in the pastoral sector are already on board with FarmIQ to help with compliance requirements, including LandCorp (Pamu) and Synlait.

For Synlait, FarmIQ provides a means to validate the company’s Lead with Pride certification system. It provides Synlait’s farmers with valuable farm management information, and a fully auditable trail proving they are leading the way in all aspects of environmental, health, safety, and animal welfare management.

The reports are accessible and easily adjusted to account for the dynamic nature of farm systems.

As more farmers use FarmIQ, more “whole of catchment” data can be combined to give clear feedback on the effectiveness of on-farm solutions in achieving what the regulations are requiring of farm businesses, rather than trying to compare based on small, selective field trials.

FarmIQ is the needle to thread farm data and technology together to deliver farmers not only proof of compliance and provenance, but usable information on their business’s ability to respond to sustainability standards.

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