I have been involved with the International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR) and its Animal Data Exchange (ADE) working group since I was first privileged to attend its annual conference, or “General Assembly” in Berlin in 2014. It was eye-opening to see all large numbers of people and organisations collaborating in diverse areas around livestock […]
Celebrating Agritech Excellence
Congratulations to Andrew Cooke from Rezare Systems for being awarded the Robin Davidson Memorial Award for Agritech Excellence. On 21st July 2022, Andrew was acknowledged at an industry dinner in Hamilton. The award is for enduring partnerships in the New Zealand agricultural technology industry. It recognises support for the industry, enthusiasm for building globally competitive businesses and willingness to […]
Imagine – evidencing compliance differently
Imagine farmers, growers, and food producers demonstrating the attributes of their products. Imagine them showing how they comply with food safety standards, environmental management expectations, social responsibility, animal welfare standards, product traceability and provenance. Now, imagine farmers doing this without filling in forms and maintaining binders of paper documentation. You may say I’m a dreamer, […]
Most farmer-focussed software products fail to meet market uptake forecasts. Sometimes the shortfall is large – say budgeting on 2000 farmer subscribers by the end of year two but achieving 187. Clearly, this sort of shortfall will get investors twitchy, so let us look at how these assumptions can be so wildly inaccurate. Number of […]
Powering up the Waka
When it comes to the impact of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, all of us are affected, and that applies doubly for future generations. We will be in the same figurative boat. And if we are to mitigate, offset, and reduce those emissions, we all need to be “pulling in the same direction”, coordinating […]
Our journey
Technology is always developing, and so are we… We are excited to announce a new look for Rezare Systems, part of the Map of Ag Group, but first let’s take a look at our journey so far… How we started Rezare Systems was founded in 2004, with the founder directors having worked at AgResearch, NZ’s […]
A moment of brilliance from Julia Jones at the recent Farmax conference was the epiphany that “the future has always been unknown”. Not only did she bring an abundance of energy, but she made me sit up and listen. The only constant is the unknown of the future. A key change we are seeing now […]
You or your company is heavily investing in an IT product, the success of which is very important to the business projections. Cash is burning, the development is slow, and you are finding many unexpected things to consider You are in new territory and losing sleep – where should you be looking? Firstly, if you […]
What makes agritech product teams effective?
A few short weeks ago, my colleague Graeme Ogle posted his thoughts on five essential characteristics of a great product owner. Graeme’s list is made on the back of his experiences and those of product owners he has worked with. I thought I would riff a little on a related theme, hence this list of skills […]
The last six-months have been enlightening. The first week started out at Field Days – nothing like jumping into the deep end! I found it particularly challenging moving from auditing where I felt comfortable in the Biosecurity sector to AgriTech where I struggled to keep up with conversation. I have realised the benefits of interpersonal skills […]
I have been involved with bespoke programming projects for 25 years – I have seen projects be both spectacularly successful and dismal failures. The success of a product in the market is in the hands of the product owner – and I have never seen a weak product owner produce a great product. When the […]
Thinking about trust in agricultural data
If you work in agriculture or agritech, you’ll know that the last few years have brought a continuous stream of amazing technology announcements. Tiny, embedded devices that watch machinery and animals in motion or sense environmental factors. An array of low-earth orbit satellites continuously imaging our earth. Artificial intelligence (AI) applications that will identify disease, […]