As General Manager of Gilmandyke Pastoral, Wade Peatman is in a prime position to experience how the AgTech revolution is changing the way the business of farming is done.
He’s in charge of an operation with 18,000 acres across five properties in Central Western NSW, including the renowned Gilmandyke Angus Stud, plus 3,000 cows, 5,000 merino ewes and up to 2,500 acres of wheat and canola.
Not surprisingly, AgTech data plays a big role in Wade’s daily decision-making and long-term planning.
Pairtree recently created a custom Gilmandyke farm dashboard, to bring key data sets together on one screen to give Wade a simple overview of a fairly complex operation.
“I look at the Pairtree dashboard with my morning coffee and it’s an instant snapshot of what the whole operation is doing.”
“We’re spread across a number of properties, some two hours away, so it’s really important to know whether a property is underperforming, if the stock isn’t maintaining or gaining enough weight and where the stocking rates sit,” said Peatman.
“We’ve got livestock DSE data from AgriWebb, two Optiweigh weighing units, a Porosity weather station and Farmbot remote water tank monitors.
“I’ve also got a fodder at hand running tally reported from the individual property managers, so if we’re coming into a dry patch we can very easily calculate if we’ve got enough hay, or need to buy some in, or look at selling some animals.
Wade was pleasantly surprised by what he discovered when he combined the key data sets…
“When we set up the dashboard, we thought it’d help us to see if we might be overstocked somewhere, but interestingly it’s turned around because now we’re looking at the stocking rates and asking why aren’t we carrying more stock in certain places.”
“The owners and I care about the health of the property as a whole so we want to maintain good ground cover and don’t want to overstock – but we don’t want to be understocked either and miss valuable opportunities.
“A farm like this is a big investment with a lot of capital tied up in land value and livestock, and it has to pay its way, so they want to see that everything we’re doing is being optimised.”
“Having easy access to all of that data helps with planning, decision making and generating reports to prove that we’re making money along the way. I don’t think enough farms are treated as businesses but that’s what they are.”
Gilmandyke Pastoral was established in Central Western NSW by the Bateman family in 1971.
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