As Oliver Roberts came across the problem of lost profits due to not managing his dairy farm’s livestock grazing practices with pasture measurements, he analyzed the situation and established Pasture.io, to aid such issues.
Since then the platform has evolved from manually measuring the pasture quality and quantity in each paddock. Pasture.io has now developed solutions to deal with the impacts of seasonal and management changes on farm profit through to a program that automates pasture measurements and delivers timely insights for maximizing the benefits of accurate grazing decisions. So much so, that his dairy farm is now rewarded with more than 50,000 dollars of extra profit each year.
Our product is built for scale and with the latest traction, this has been a critical component to our journey.
By collaborating with universities around Australia, Pasture.io has solved various farming issues like completing tasks on time, losing an opportunity by not making calculated management decisions and seasonal volatility that impacts a farmer’s bottom line of profitability. The company offers automatic and timely insights into farming operations. It saves the farmers from expensive labor to measure the pasture quantity in each of their paddocks. Pasture.io rather uses satellites, local weather information, and the farmer’s paddock compliance records to find the measurement. The solution not only saves time but has measured metrics so that they can make sound farm management decisions that enable them to see the effects of seasonality and importantly increase their profit sustainably.
With the recent advancements in computing power and satellites that fly over Earth daily, capturing images at a resolution that is beneficial for meaningful information, Pasture.io also made a massive development in rural areas as well. It uses advanced technology in the modeling space, utilizes bleeding-edge statistical methodology, and has maximized its machine-learning architecture to run in parallel. The company also uses technologies such as soil, air, and climate sensors and cow wearables for animal health, production, and welfare purposes with more technology in their development pipeline.
Pasture.io has an interest in opening up the agricultural industry to the tech world, universities, and pre-tertiary students. It has thus been involved in a project that was headed by The University of New England called the SMARTFarm Project, where Pasture.io was able to partner with The University of Tasmania and Sense-T in developing a learning module for use across universities throughout the world. The project aims to bring real-time farm-collected data into the classroom, allowing students to make on-farm management decisions from their computers. Thus, allowing students to get a feel of the daily decisions farmers make with real data. This allows students to see another side of farming that doesn’t involve gumboots.
“Our product is built for scale and with the latest traction, this has been a critical component to our journey,” says Oliver Roberts, Founder & CEO, Pasture.io. The company has API-backed everything in the system, which allows it to quickly partner with those who are open to sharing and who also share a similar ethos in helping farmers with their daily tactical and seasonal strategic outlooks.
Pasture.io has customers across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and North America and is gradually expanding in other pasture-growing regions such as South America, South Africa, and parts of Europe. The company is 100 percent bootstrapped and proving to be an innovative company to watch throughout 2020 as global sales increase and the company grows a strong foothold in this tech space. “We wish to aggressively expand our customer footprint across the globe, bringing a service to farmers with a high return on investment above 40x,” adds Oliver.
Know The Founder
Oliver has a strong background in the Australian dairy industry. Having earned his stripes on his family dairy farm on the NW Coast of Tasmania. His strengths lie in pasture management, ruminant nutrition, and agribusiness. Along with lean startups, Oliver’s strengths are supported by a BAgr and an MBA. His passion lies in sustainable Agri systems with Pasture.io Pty Ltd and Milkflow.io. This passion gives him the drive for improving farm systems with agtech that is on the cutting edge.
Oliver has worked with the University of Tasmania and the University of Sydney. His role at UTas was working on the Sense-T mobile pasture prediction tools. At USyd he oversaw the robotic dairy operations and 5 support properties. He is adept at mixing academia, technology, and agriculture. This is further evident with Pasture.io’s relationship with The University of New England’s SmartFarm Learning Hub and Central Queensland University’s Women in Agriculture projects. And further evident by earning the trust of tertiary universities across Australia with Pasture.io’s management philosophy.
