With years of experience in Australia's harsh conditions we are now on the ground in the U.S. helping grain farmers improve their grain tracking and management in time for harvest so they maximize profits.
Born in Australia, AgriDigital has had one foot in North America from the beginning. Why? The U.S. and Canada are two of the biggest grain producing countries in the world (you can have fun customizing these FAO charts to see how Australia, Canada and the U.S. stack up in grains production).
Our company vision is unabashedly bold: we want every farm, grain buyer and elevator to have access to the very best grain tracking and supply chain management technology so that they can drive transparency and efficiency in their own business and across global agri-supply chains. Given the scope of the grains industry in the U.S. and Canada, from the get-go our sights have been on North America.
Being part of the FoodSystem6 accelerator (based in California) helped us refine our strategy early in our journey and connected us with mentors and partners who continue to be part of our growth. Our relationships with grain farmers and industry professionals across North America. have been just as influential. In 2019, our team spent weeks living in Arkansas with our friends and partners at Sullivan Family Ag customizing Waypath for the U.S. - you can hear Mike, Cynthia, and Cassie talk about that experience.
AgriDigital was founded by farmers and we understand the unique challenges growers face no matter where they farm:
- complex supply chains
- data that is hard to record and reconcile across teams and out in the field
- increasing back office workload and costs
- climate variability
- pricing volatility
the list goes on but the bottom line is that all of these problems impact farmers' profitability.
There are differences in the grains industry across Australia, the U.S. and we have spent the past two years working with early adopting customers and our mentors and advisors to ensure we are market ready. One of the biggest points of difference between Australia and North America is the amount of on farm grain storage - more in the U.S. and Canada. Also, many North American grain growing zones need to dry, blend and prepare grain to ensure it meets the buyer’s specifications. And of course there are different units of measurement: tonnes or bushels? Acres or hectares? We have also had to adjust our vocabulary and make sure we speak, and our technology “talks”, in the local vernacular: combine or header? Bin or silo?
Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, the common truths of grain supply chains hold true: firstly, growers are not capturing the full value they could and should be and this ultimately impacts their commercial sustainability and secondly, many growers have started the digital journey, but many have not and are at risk of missing out on the value being created as digitization of supply chains becomes mainstream. On top of this the drive for sustainable agricultural practices must be underpinned by data that can travel with the grain beyond the farmgate and into the supply chain to support market access and hopefully premiums.
Over and over, we hear the same three pain points from growers in Australia and the U.S.:
- inefficiency, and sometimes inaccuracy of handling grain spreadsheets and paper tickets (we have lost count of how many binders upon binders we have seen of paper records)
- technology that doesn't work in the field or shed where much of the actual activity is happening
- wanting all post-harvest activities in one place to make quick fact-based decisions.
To add to this, in the U.S. there is the added complexity of landlord splits and reporting for many farmers to deal with.
To tweak Apple's trademarked phrase: "there's a grain tracking app for that" — and it's called AgriDigital Onfarm (formerly Waypath). These problems are our bread and butter and our team is passionate about solving them and enabling farmers to track and trace every load of grain from the field right through to payment. AgriDigital Onfarm (formerly Waypath) is accessible from any device so farmers can manage their grain harvest, hauling out, contracts and reconcile payments from anywhere, anytime.
In 2020 Covid-19 disrupted all of our plans. For us, we had to bring our team home from North America in March of that year. This slowed us down in the short term. Yet, we still started working with some amazing U.S. farmers. And we used every moment of this disruption to ensure we had the best possible grain tracking app to meet the needs of farmers across North America when we could get back on the ground.
Well, it’s 2021 and we're well and truly back! We are excited to have Katrina Stanislaw leading our North American team ensuring our customers and initial partners have a local presence to go to. We're talking to growers, co-ops, industry associations, grain supply chain participants every day. We're here to help growers simplify every step of their harvest, be in control of their grain all the way through to payment and to maximise harvest profits.
Connect with us on social media or get in touch to be a part of our journey or to find our more about how AgriDigital Onfarm (formerly Waypath) can help you this harvest.
If you are interested in learning more about our AgriDigital Onfarm (formerly Waypath) partner program please email sales@agridigital.io
