You've got an efficient track record of day-to-day tasks, so then you can shift into analysing data and making sound decisions. It’s quite neat and I signed up the day after it came out.’
Alastair Neville is a young farmer doing all he can to add value to the Reporoa farm developed and farmed by his grandfather then father. And the 28-year-old is making every use of new technology to help him that he possibly can, seeing that precision farming innovations can lead to some easy gains by cutting expenses and increasing efficiency.

"I've always been interested in new technology," he said.

"Agriculture and technology are in quite an exciting space at present. There are a lot of things on the horizon in the way of further time-saving tools."

Alastair’s initial motivation was to find a way to make technology work in their family business which, like many farm enterprises, is "seriously time poor".

Just one area is the reduction of operator error through more accurate placement of fertiliser and seed by using Tracmap, he told the MobileTech Conference in Rotorua in March.

Easy to use mobile solution keeps farmer and workers connected…

Faced with the difficulty of maintaining oversight on his farm when business took him away from the property, farmer Greg McCracken joined the team of early adopters trialling JobDone. This complete farm management solution equips managers and every team member with a smartphone-based system to take complete control of operations, providing records of work to be done, immediate access to health and safety requirements, and ‘JobDone’ confirmation after completion of every task.

A dairy farmer in Wellsford, north of Auckland, Greg McCracken has a herd of some 700 cows. Deeply involved in the local community, McCracken is an elected member of the Fonterra Shareholders’ Council for the Southern Northland area and is the chairman of the Lower North Partner Farm. He holds a variety of community and dairy-related positions including chairman of the Wellsford Vet Club, chairman of the Tomarata School and has been involved as a judge in dairy industry awards.

Fonterra is pushing on with a business relationship with digital innovation start-up company JobDone after they won an idea pitch yesterday at GridAKL, in Auckland's innovation precinct.

The New Zealand economy is dominated by small firms, and the Business Herald is putting the spotlight on some of them in a new regular feature.
Today: JobDone wants to make life easier for farmers.

The need to improve compliance, optimise staff management and streamline farming costs has prompted a new technology start-up to address productivity issues that cost the primary sector in excess of $500 million per year.