Is the Margin Squeeze Reaper Stealing Your Crop Profits?
Margin squeeze is the Grim Reaper of cropping. Sometimes it feels like we’re defenceless as it quietly strips profits from our farms in broad daylight. Across the country, rising input costs, weather extremes, and compliance pressures are tightening margins. Despite many growers working harder than ever, their bottom line keeps getting leaner. Identifying where the […]
Agtech is transforming the face of agronomy and agriculture
The way agronomists do their job is constantly changing, especially as agricultural technologies (agtech) on farms become the norm. When NSW Central West agronomist, Greg Miller, began his career 20 years ago, the triplicate recommendation book was still in vogue and widely used. “You hand wrote all your recommendations and gave the top copy to […]
Trusted advisers still critical for success
This photo captures a turning point in Australia’s transition to online livestock marketing. In early 1987, with the Catombal Range in the background, we prepare our first two decks of cattle for the new Computer Assisted Livestock Marketing (CALM). Two people make this photo special: on the right is my grandfather, and in the red […]
Collaboration in agriculture: from droughts to digital agronomy
In 1984, after one of the worst droughts on record, our pastures were depleted and livestock numbers had to be cut back. To make up for it, we ramped up cropping. With a John Deere 8630 and a 32’ Connor Shea air seeder, plus a mate’s Case 4890 tractor, we managed to sow around 5,000 […]
Broadacre cropping’s future: active management and agtech
In the latest Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) Update Papers, Hamish Munro (Pairtree) and Chris Geeves (Lightwood Consultancy) share their vision of what the future of profitable, sustainable broadacre cropping in Australia needs to look like. In their paper, ‘Securing 200 more seasons: active farm management and digital integration in broadacre cropping’, the […]
Invest in the ‘digital backbone’ of Australian Agriculture
CapRaise25: Pairtree is offering an investment opportunity to professional and sophisticated investors, family offices and venture capitalists, looking for a homegrown business with enormous potential benefits to the profitability and sustainability of Australian agriculture. We make agtech data work better for farmers, agronomists and industry to improve management, productivity, reporting, compliance and climate resilience. Clients […]
Then and now: farming takes teamwork
This photo from the 1920s shows a team of eight horses sowing a paddock on my great-grandfather’s farm, with the Catombal Range in the background. It was taken by his neighbour who also helped with sowing when he was needed. In this series of ‘200 More Seasons’ articles, I reflect on my family’s farming […]
Call to ‘ARMS’ for agronomists & growers
A new Australian Regional Mesonet System (ARMS), formerly the National Mesonet Initiative (NMI) developed by Pairtree, is set to change the way agronomists and grower groups view and use all the data collected on farms by agtech devices. Agronomists know only too well that their advice on when to plant, spray or harvest is based […]
Ingenuity with an eye to the future
In this ‘200 More Seasons™’ series, a common thread is legacy – whether it’s a parcel of land, a piece of equipment, some great advice, or a ‘can do’ attitude passed down to the next generation. This photo is my grandfather harvesting wheat in the late 1930s, with our beloved Catombal Ranges in the […]
200 more seasons to follow the first 148
At the end of the gold rush back in 1877, my family had their land resumed to make way for the Gosling Creek reservoir in Orange, at a time when broadacre wheat production was booming. They soon settled 10 miles north-east of the nearby town of Cumnock, at a place that became known as […]