Knowing farmers are far more likely to take advice from other farmers, Natalie Engel helps people understand the value of agricultural technologies (agtech) by sharing her own experiences. Alongside husband Chris Whiteman, she runs Sunlight Grazing, a 9,000 acre grassfed beef finishing operation located near Rolleston in the Central Queensland Highlands.
Their agtech includes three Observant water tank sensors, an Optiweigh in-paddock livestock weighing device, Ceres Tag GPS animal tags, Mobble livestock farm management and Gallagher Animal Performance software, with plans to add Cibo Lab’s satellite farm pasture biomass mapping service in the near future.
Shocked by lack of agtech on bigger farms
Natalie took part in the Qld DPI’s 2024 FarmTechConnect initiative and was shocked to discover that, even though she represented the smallest farm business in the group, she used more agtech than all the other farmers taking part – including those from very large, successful operations.
The pilot program at the Central Queensland Smart Cropping Centre, worked with producers to investigate attitudes around agtech and to furnish them with knowledge and experience to drive up its adoption by becoming local agtech influencers.
Agtech adoption barriers no surprise
Natalie understands the barriers around agtech adoption, including an inability to recognise and calculate potential labour savings and cost benefits, and even just the overwhelming choice of different types of tech and suppliers these days.
“Producers are often asked to outlay money without really knowing if it represents value for money or if the product will work the way it should, whether there will be enough support or their data will be safe, and even whether the company will still be around at the end of the year,” said Natalie.
“Another problem in the past was companies building something that seems like a great idea, but they didn’t consult with enough farmers or do enough in-paddock testing, so it just didn’t work in real world conditions. Thankfully, this is improving now with much more industry collaboration.”
“When I first got Pairtree, I was like why doesn’t everyone have one of these?”
Natalie now uses a Pairtree farm dashboard, to more easily manage and see the data from all her agtech devices and services together in one place. It also includes detailed historical and forecast weather, livestock markets and basic satellite imagery. This helps to make better data-backed decisions, and for her it was a gamechanger.
“There’s only one login, so I can check the weather – especially if I’m mustering, I can go onto the livestock page where my Optiweigh sits, I can see the water tanks, the livestock numbers in Mobble, everything together.”
“When my agent rings, I’ve got all the data at my fingertips so I can tell him how many head I’ve got, at what weight, in which paddock.
Turning an agtech sceptic into an enthusiast
While Natalie could be described as an early adopter of new technologies, like so many other producers, her husband Chris was less enthusiastic.
“We were among the first 50 to sign up for Mobble. We found it to be the cheapest, easiest, on your phone option to manage tasks. If I have a chopper pilot coming in to muster, I can share a map of the paddocks with him via Mobble, rather than trying to give him directions and risk him going to the wrong place.
“Chris was sceptical about our Optiweigh, but I could see the long-term value in it. We get an average weight for the paddock without having to guess or run the whole mob in to weigh them.
“It’s amazing. And even better now I have it integrated to my Pairtree dashboard, I can see individual weights there, whereas in the Optiweigh app I can only see averages.”
The 2019 drought was the decider
“Back in 2018 when we got our first Observant water tank sensors, Chris wasn’t convinced about the value of any agtech, but the 2019 drought put paid to any lingering doubts. All our dams were either dry or mud puddles and we were relying on tanks and troughs to keep our cattle alive.
“By having the Observant system in place and knowing our tanks were full, we could head out and start feeding in the morning without having to send someone to do a water run first. If a tank showed empty first thing, then it was all hands on deck to find the busted pipe or trough before the temperature climbed and the cattle were off water for too long.
“The 2019 drought was a tough one on all levels, and the peace of mind the Observant system provided was second to none. Not only that, it probably paid for itself with the diesel we saved driving out to check, not to mention our time. It gave some reprieve during a time when everything else looked very bleak.
“Chris is now the first person to talk up water monitoring if anyone mentions it, pulling out his phone to show our current tank levels and the past history. Adding an Observant rain bucket also helped to cement his belief in it because it shows just how much variability in rain we can have over different sections of the property.”
Natalie and Chris are a great example of an operation that has added different types of agtech at different times, as they could afford it and when the benefits were too hard to ignore. Pairtree allows them to integrate different components from different suppliers into a farm dashboard for easier access and better data management with a single log in.
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