The products and services of Irish Agri-Tech companies are helping to bring greater efficiencies to farming.
With ongoing challenges in agriculture, and the need to develop and implement sustainable practices, the work of these entrepreneurs has never been more vital, according to Minister for Enterprise Simon Coveney.
"Ireland is synonymous with agriculture, and it is our own entrepreneurs who are helping to shape the future of the sector globally," he said.
He was speaking at the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Arena at the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, County Laois, this week.
Thousands of farmers visited the arena to see the latest technology from Agri-Tech start-ups and established companies exhibiting there.
Micron Agritech has developed artificial intelligence technology that can test animals for worms.
The firm is a spinout of Technological University Dublin, and sells to veterinary practices and co-ops across the country.
"Instead of the traditional method of a farmer having to send a sample off to a lab and waiting a week for a result, they can use our system either themselves or through their vet practice to get a result within 10 minutes," said Sean Smyth, Co Founder and Commercial Director.
"It speeds up the process and then they can make a quicker decision on whether or not they need to treat the animals for worms."
In agriculture, there are environmental concerns about the incorrect use of medications and Micron Agritech's tests help prevent a lot of that.
The business has been commercially active since late last year and is now processing thousands of tests every month.
"There are some great initiatives driving farmers to do more testing now," Mr Smyth said, "and technology like ours being more available, makes testing more accessible."
He said diagnostics are the future of the industry as opposed to just preventative treatment.
Concept Dairy is a platform that allows dairy farmers lock in their milk prices into the future.
Concept Dairy was founded by Diarmaid Mac Colgáin and Jacqueline Fitzgerald, who realised that there is a problem across the dairy supply chain.
They say farmers rarely know what price they will get for their milk; processors don't have the tools and systems to manage their price risk, which has a knock-on impact on their farmers and the milk price, and buyers need security of supply and to lock-in margins efficiently.
With Concept Dairy, they say farmers have the ability to lock in their margin and control their own profitability.
"Just like Ryanair in the middle of the Covid crisis, they locked in really low oil prices as far as they could. Similar to the dairy industry, farmers should be locking in high prices when they can and we're facilitating their processor to do that," said Mr Mac Colgáin.
"If you rewind the clock to this time last year, farmers could have locked out 50 to 54 cents a litre for this year and next year. We are seeing prices are down to 32 cents a litre, so farmers are really losing out at the moment."
He said a lot of farmers are very interested in Concept Dairy, and the company is working with some processors in England as well.
"We are really getting some traction on the ground," he said.
"Unfortunately it takes this level of volatility for people to say, 'Oh I should have locked in my price this time last year', but everyone thought it could have gone to 70 cents last year. It's about managing risk."
Cotter Agritech supplies a hardware solution to make sheep handling easier and safer for farmers.
"A lot of farmers are handling inside of races and they're inside with the animals, trying to drench them, give them injections and so on," said Nick Cotter, CEO and Co-Founder of Cotter Agritech.
"This piece of equipment, the animals are contained safely so they can't hurt themselves and they also can't hurt the farmer. It increases safety on the farm but it also speeds up efficiency."
Cotter Agritech also has a software part of the business that focuses on antimicrobial resistance.
"We specifically deal with parasites that affect sheep, so as the sheep is growing they are eating grass and bringing parasites in, and traditional practice is to drench all the animals on a monthly basis with a broad spectrum antibiotic.
"But what's happening after doing that for 50 years is that the drugs don't work anymore, very much like antibiotic resistance with humans," Mr Cotter said.
"What we've built is a piece of software that takes in weighing information, grass quality and the weather, to predict whether or not an animal would benefit from a drenching or not. It's moving to a targeted model where we only treat the ones that need it."
The firm has been able to prove through trials with UCD and Queen's University Belfast that their software is able to reduce the use of drugs by 40 to 50% and get the exact same level of productivity out of the flock.
"It is huge savings for the farmer, and a massive credential from a social point of view showing that farmers are doing everything that they can reasonably do to reduce chemical inputs on the farm."
Equine MediRecord is an approved digital medicine register that simplifies compliance to animal welfare and anti-doping regulations. It's based in the Curragh, Co Kildare.
There are many records that need to be kept under European regulation when taking care of horses.
Finley Dargan, who co-founded the business with his brother Pierce, said Equine MediRecord was born out frustration with paperwork.
"We just found in our own yard, it was becoming a bit of mess with papers everywhere, and paper can get lost or damaged. We thought, surely someone has come up with a digitised way of dealing with this paperwork and we couldn't find one, so we decided we better come up with a digital solution to this."
They launched in 2018 in the Irish market and went immediately over the UK, and now Equine MediRecord is in the US, Saudi Arabia, Asia and Africa.
"People just find it useful to keep track of their horses health through our app," Mr Dargan said.
"We try to link in to as many useful services as possible. We're linking into veterinary systems as well now, so if your vet is giving your horse medicines that comes immediately through onto your phone or your computer. It's just about making life easier for people who are looking after horses."
Herdwatch is a farm management solution that allows farmers to get rid of farm paperwork and make better decisions, according to Digital Marketing Executive, Diarmaid O'Connor.
The app saves farmers time and money on calf birth registration, herd management, medicine records, while they are out on the farm.
"All their information gets saved to the cloud, it's never lost," Mr O'Connor said.
Herdwatch has introduced a new grass and crops software which allows farmers to maintain digital field records, help with grass planning and crop management.
"It gives them a full overview of everything that's going on on their farm and allows them to improve their performance on the farm. Farmers that might be under a derogation, they can track that through the app and show that they're compliant," he said.
Herdwatch has over 20,000 farms on the app across Ireland, the UK, "and now worldwide with our sheep and goats part of the app being released in America, Canada, Australia and further afield".
Mr O'Connor said Herdwatch has had great success going global.
Pearson Milking Technology is celebrating 75 years in business, manufacturing milking machinery and dairy equipment.
The company supplies and installs milking machines, from standard machines right up to high spec machines running the parlour management system.
The high spec machines provides information on each individual cow. "He can feed the cow according to how much milk she's producing, he can separate the cows into different groups after milking, and if he has lame cows they can be separated through the drafting unit automatically without him having to go near cows," Graham Wilkinson of Pearson Milking Technology explained.
"If cows are to be AI'd, they can be separated automatically without him having to enter a number."
Mr Wilkinson said business has been good, but milk price has slowed things down a little this year. "The business is constant so it's not too bad at all."
"The benefits of the technology are being seen by farmers, especially with the price of meal. Feeding cows according to their yield is a big benefit. You are not giving cows that are giving very little amounts of milk the same as a cow that's giving a lot of milk."
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