Profiting from pasture: AIMER seeks to maximise returns for dairy farmers with precision tech and AI
It recently launched a smartphone app, AIMER Vision, that uses 360-degree vision on the farmer’s phone to get an estimated measurement of the pasture.
Founded in June this year, AIMER is an AI-powered system that analyses pasture data generated by different sources, including data gathered through satellite and sensor technologies, as well as from the farm walk.
Precision agriculture at the paddock level
Speaking to AgTechNavigator, its business development manager Danyel Hosto explained how the technologies contribute to precision pasture and supplement management:
“Where Aimer is different is that we’re looking at it on a more precise paddock level. What our AI does is that it learns the growth patterns of individual paddocks, and information about their soil fertility, nitrogen application, etc.
“Being able to understand the responses of all those individual paddocks allow farmers to learn how they grow in comparison to the rest of the farm. So, we’re constantly able to predict an estimate, at any given day, what is the amount of feed that’s feeding in the paddock.”
The traditional pasture management tends to be labour- and time-intensive, as farmers would typically spend a few hours walking the farm and using a rising plate meter to measure all the paddocks to establish the amount of feed in the paddocks.
Forecasting ability
Hosto added that most of pasture management systems centres around reporting historical data. However, its application is able to provide an estimation up to 21 days ahead.
“It’s about taking the data we see now, and forecast ahead to help farmers make the best pasture management decisions. Farmers can generate an optimised grazing plan.
“They have the option to run multiple scenarios in the app, experiment with their resource inputs like dropping the paddocks out or adding more supplements, and then see how they can optimise the total feed available to their herd.”
Returns on investments (ROIs)
Quality of information, app user-friendliness and practical information are top of mind when it comes to designing agtech solutions for farmers, said AIMER.
It added that the app was developed in partnership with New Zealand farmers since September 2022, and was launched at the annual national agricultural event called National Agricultural Fieldays.
Aside from time and labour-savings, the other ROI benefits include improved pasture quality and pasture intake, which refers to the intake of pasture dry matter in grazing animals. The state of the pasture also determines the need to bring in other supplement feed to substitute the diet of grazing animals.
“Especially in a year like this, we’ve seen the dairy pay outs drop in New Zealand. So, making sure that farmers are maximising the use of their cheapest form of feed, which is grass, is very important. That’s one place that we see AIMER will be able to help.”
The potential value breakdown can be accessed via a ROI calculator on its website.
Next steps
AIMER is currently servicing New Zealand, Australia, and Chile, and targeting pasture-based farming countries like the United States and Ireland.
Notably, it sees an opportunity to integrate other stakeholders, including supplement companies and farming consultants, in its app.
“Using that pasture-first approach, by integrating with other partners across the industry, we create an ecosystem to support the farmers. That’s probably how we would plan to grow the business, as opposed to retooling it [for other non-pasture-based systems].”
As for the state of innovation in precision agriculture, Hosto highlighted that most of it is centred around AI and machine learning to integrate multiple, different data sources to provide more precise estimations.
However, it remains challenging to account for the data around the increasingly unpredictable weather due to climate change.
Watch the video for a demonstration of AIMER Vision:
Demonstration of AIMER Vision smartphone app (Source: AIMER)
