‘At the tip of your fingers’: How connected data is changing decisions on the farm

For farmers managing thousands of hectares, the working day can involve an extraordinary number of moving parts: livestock and crops to monitor, water and pastures to manage, markets to follow and weather conditions that can change the plan before breakfast.

Traditionally, keeping across it all has meant time on the road, physically checking stock, paddocks and rain gauges. But on two very different farming businesses in the central west of New South Wales, technology is changing how that picture comes together.

Orange-based agricultural technology business Pairtree Intelligence connects information from the apps and data sources farmers already use, bringing it together in one place.

For Gilmandyke Pastoral general manager Wade Peatman, who helps oversee a livestock and cropping operation across five major holdings, it means starting the morning with a snapshot of the business. 

“Pairtree simplifies the whole thing for me,” he said.

“I can open it up in the morning and all the major components are there for me to look at straight away.”

Turning scattered information into a bigger picture

Pairtree founder and CEO Hamish Munro recognised that modern farming increasingly involved making decisions using information from many different sources. 

“Farmers need to be able to make a lot of decisions on a lot of data points,” he said.

While farmers have access to weather services, market information, satellite imagery and other digital tools, that information can sit across multiple platforms.

Munro likens it to having a collection of apps on a smartphone.

“What we can do is connect all those things together,” he said. 

“That gives you better oversight of what’s happening in your operation, along with quick, actionable decision support.”

Angus, merinos and five properties to manage

About 12 kilometres north of Orange, at the headwaters of the Bell River, the basalt soils of Kangaroobie are home to Gilmandyke Pastoral’s Angus stud.

Founded by Belinda Bateman and her late husband Edmund, the family business now spans five major holdings across the Central West, from cold breeding country south of Rockley, where snow can dust the hills in winter, to grain and fodder country near Harden. 

The operation includes Angus studs and commercial cattle alongside cropping, Merino wool and prime lamb production. Peatman said it is predominantly livestock, with about 3,000 commercial cows, 500 stud cows and between 5,000 and 6,000 Merino sheep.

“The biggest challenge is the scale of it,” Peatman said.

“You can’t be everywhere at once. Being able to pull data and see how things are operating makes my job a hell of a lot easier.”

Vines, livestock and an ancient volcano 

At Angullong Wines, a different mix of enterprises creates a similar challenge.

Farm and vineyard manager James Crossing oversees a family-owned operation in the cool-climate Orange region. When the Crossing family bought the property in 1950, sheep were its sole enterprise. Cattle and cropping followed in the 1970s before the family ventured into wine in the late 1990s.

Today, rolling hills and limestone escarpments fall towards the Belubula River, while vineyards grow in the foothills of Mount Canobolas, an ancient volcano. The wines make their way to Angullong’s cellar door in historic bluestone stables at Millthorpe.

“We’re running a mixed enterprise,” Crossing said. “There are plenty of things we need information about, preferably early in the day.” 

Having that information early helps Crossing decide what needs to happen that day.

“It helps with our decision-making,” he said.

A new way of reading the land

For Peatman, having more information at hand does not replace agricultural judgement or the need to be on the ground. 

“You used to rely a lot on gut feel,” he said.

Those instincts still matter, but they can now be supported by information available before a manager has travelled across the property.

“Now that’s all at the tip of your fingers,” Peatman said. “You can make decisions so much quicker.”

But there are still things a screen cannot tell you. 

“As good as the data is, you still have to see an animal for yourself,” he said. “You still have to check on what’s going on in a paddock.”

For Peatman, the value lies in combining those observations with a broader view of the operation.

“On a broad scale, the data gives us a better picture of how the whole operation is functioning,” he said.

“I think it’s probably the most exciting thing happening in agriculture at the moment.” 

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