Reporting and administration is becoming more time intensive for farmers. Transformation Lead Hayley Morris is part of a team working on ways to save farmers time when it comes to compliance reporting.
I grew up on a beef and sheep farm in Hawke’s Bay and spent a lot of time on dairy farms as a kid. I had planned on becoming a journalist and went down that route at university but while I was there I became interested in digital media and the solutions these could provide.
This was in an era when Google was still a start-up, and we were designing and building CD-ROMs – very different from where we are now. After graduating I worked for a software company and my first project was with Fonterra on the original Fonterra farmer-facing website, Fencepost. I ended up delivering farmer-facing solutions over probably the next five to six years. In 2016, after many years working in other industries, I joined Fonterra and worked on the launch of the Farm Source website and mobile applications.
The farming world is such a rewarding space to be in. You just see how hard farmers work. I like being able to marry up what technology can do to support them and help them have the lifestyle that they want.
Now I’m working in the farmer experience space on simplifying compliance. We are really trying to simplify the whole experience for farmers.
Compliance has been a continued source of frustration for farmers. Before 2013, the requirements to be a farmer were pretty well understood.
From 2013 though, new requirements around nitrogen recording and the sustainability space started to really emerge. It has become very important to assure government, local councils, and overseas markets that our products, and the way they’re produced, are compliant.
And with the range of change of regulation and requirements, farmers are now spending about 10 hours per week on admin with compliance as the number one task. That’s time that farmers have to be in an office, and not out on-farm doing what they love.
We’re keen to lessen that burden. We want to halve the time it takes – that’s our goal. We can do a better job using digital technology.
Rather than information gathering being a point of frustration, our goal is to turn compliance into something that is really simple, more automated and less manual.
We’ve looked at a few things from the process, people, and importantly the technology involved in compliance reporting; and we’ve come up with ways that we can make on-farm compliance simpler and easier for farmers. We’re looking at connecting data across the industry, making it easier to capture data and to track actions, and making sure farmers have support when they need it.
We’re looking at ways we can help farmers to use data for themselves more easily too – it’s not just about reduced manual admin time, but also making sure farmers have insights that can drive more value in profitability and efficiency.
All of this is underway and being worked on – it’s going to take a couple of years, but we’ve already had some wins.
The Co-op is now the first and only processor in New Zealand to have a modified Farm Dairy Assessment. This is where parts of the assessment can be simplified or shortened based things like past assessment performance. The Co-op has been able to advocate for our farmers to regulators and show the high quality of the information farmers provide. Our farmers work so hard and have great quality practices and procedures.
Data integrations is another big part of the strategy, and we’ve seen some progress here. We’ve heard from farmers that they’re having to double-up on providing information across the industry. We’ve started by connecting data from LIC, Ballance and Ravensdown and we’ve got lots more to come in this space.
Farmers are already designing systems and processes. The thing that they’re lacking is that industry connection – industry data sharing infrastructure is key. We can provide this, through our connections, our website, our mobile apps – ways to actually make capturing information easier, tracking compliance information, tracking how ready you are for an audit, if we can provide those sorts of tools that can fit into your processes on farm, then that should really help reduce some time.
There’s so much more to come. The Co-op has to take a lead on delivering new ways of reporting and compliance, we’ve got farmers involved every step of the way. This has to be guided by what farmers need, and it has to really save farmers time.