The Country 10/10/25: Jasper van Halder talks to Hamish McKay

We catch up with the chief executive of Agnition, a subsidiary of Ravensdown, to find out more about the Farm Innovation Network.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, nothing better than a bit of agritech chat on

(00:03):
a Friday. Now, yes, but Van Helder, CEO of Agnition.
This is Ravensdown's ag Tech Accelerator, works alongside the cooperative
to deliver smarter farming for a better New Zealand, driven
by passion to see agriculture succeed through innovation. Rigorous sort

(00:23):
of things going on behind here. So we're going to
talk to yes but now yes, but thanks for joining us.
What part of the country do we find you in today?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Beautiful Southland?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Today, the beautiful Southland hard to beat on a good day. Okay,
look what exactly is is the Farm Innovation Network.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, no, thank you. As you mentioned admission is the
investment arm of Ravens Down and our job is to
scover for the best ideas from around the world that
can help farmers here in New Zealand. So every year
we look at about two hundred three hundred new innovations.
And when we started doing this two years ago, we
found that something important is missing in our sector. There

(01:04):
is just a big gap between clever ideas and what
actually works on farm too. Many great innovators don't really
understand farming and many farmers don't have the time to
keep up with all the new tech, so we decided
to build a bridge between the two and that's how
the Farm Innovation Network was born.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Okay, in terms of Agritic innovation, how we measuring up.
Are we punching above a l whiton some great results
coming through?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah? Absolutely, absolutely, we're doing a lot well. At the
same time, there's so much more happening overseas than that
we do domestically that we see it as our role
to look over and beyond what we find in New Zealand.
So what we do with the Farm Innovation Network is
that we look for exciting new technologies, often before they're

(01:54):
out on the market, and we offered them too a
group of our curious farmers that grows to try out.
So you can think of them as as beta testers,
but we call them our pilot farmers. And those pilot
farmers they get access to new actech and they tested
out in real conditions and they give all their speedback
to our innovators. And the feedback is gold because that
helps shape the detector real world conditions and speeds up

(02:16):
how fast it can be used across the sector.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I guess you could call it sort of match making
an agricultural heaven. Isn't it getting the you know, getting
the connecting the farmers to the innovators and coming out
with a mirldless result.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
One hundred percent. Yeah, we're almost like a dating agency,
isn't it said that We've now found about five hundred
farmers and growers and industry contract contacts and they you know,
they cover everything from dairy and livestock to LT horticulture
and arable.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, so I've got a great idea. Should I have
a great idea or you know, and want to get
it to that on farm trial? How does it? Is
it sort of a dragon's dan type situation to get
to get to the next stage to get on POM.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, we see Listen, we see a lot of great ideas,
but they rarely make it from the let's say, from
the kitchen table to the board table. So you would
need to do a bit more homework and get actually
something that works before we can trial that out. But
what we now do is we do the opposite. So
innovators we overseas know how to find us. Because if

(03:23):
you look at the agritecht scene globally, quite a few
innovators are from outside the sector and what they struggle
with is actually getting to real farmers. And so we said, overseas,
we roll out the red carpety in the unit, come
to us. We will educate you on our system, on
our farmers, on our soil so that you can adapt.
But then when it's shelf ready, come to us. So

(03:46):
that's what we're doing now. On the on Wednesday the
twenty ninth, we have our webinar running. It's kind of
like a Shark Tank innovation session. It's a bit it's
fast space, it's a bit of fun. It's free and
you can just head up to Farm Innovation Network dot coed.
Is that to sign up?

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Fantastic? Best success story that you can tell us about
so far?

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yes, but oh one good one that we particularly like
because he's from New Zealand is amor amer Farming. Not
sure if if you've heard about them, but they it's
basically an affordable way to do past your measurement differently,
and the founder was a farmer's followed a gap in

(04:27):
the market build a technology and we've been backing him
ever since. And for instance, you take your phone eye,
you scan your your FedEx, and the algorithm in the
background tells you where you should go for the highest yield.
Amazing story, and they're now going overseas.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Amazing all round. That is yesper from Agnition Gee love
that sort of thing going on. LETD say four or
five hundred farms involved in this and all sorts of ideas,
absolutely brilliant