A DairyNZ study revealed the average farmer can spend hours per week working on compliance admin. That’s a big chunk of productive farm time, spent in the office – but new solutions are starting to give farmers that time back.
Fonterra recently interviewed several farmers, to ask about their experiences with things like records and assessment. Farmers won’t be surprised to know that most of the feedback was around the frustration of lack of industry data integration and the duplication of record keeping. It’s hard for farmers to keep track of all the requirements of them when they’re spread over various locations – and especially when there is farm staff involved.
Keeping track, locating, and consolidating tasks was one of the biggest opportunities identified for starting to save farmers a bit more time on compliance admin.
One farmer reports: “it is easy to get confused between red pages, dairy records, and it’s quite easy to miss something. We just need a page on the Farm Source website that shows all your data, and what needs to be done.”
A better experience
Fonterra immediately started work on solving these challenges – starting with annual Farm Dairy Assessments (shed inspections).
“We've looked at the whole process and how farmers currently use technology or other systems to manage their assessments. I think there was a clear opportunity to simplify and streamline,” says Transformation Lead Hayley Morris.
The main solution is a new interactive checklist that farmers can find on the Farm Source website, which helps them to prepare for their assessment.
“It’s personalised to each farm, so farmers can see all the actions they need to complete for their own assessment, including what they’ve already shared with us, and what still needs organising. They can tick actions off as they go, so they know how ready they are,” Hayley says.
“And QCONZ assessors will check any documents that are loaded to the checklist, if they’re there more than seven days in advance, which is great because it means farmers don’t need to go through those documents on-farm, and the whole process is a bit quicker. Farmers can do that by loading PDFs to the checklist directly, or by photo capture in the Dairy Diary app.”
The checklist also recognises data integrations – if a farmer is using the Co-op’s Dairy Diary app, LIC’s MINDA, Ballance’s MyBallance or Ravensdown’s Hawkeye apps, and has given permission for data-sharing with the Co-op, information can be pre-populated ahead of the assessment. This saves farmers time in double-handling information.
“We’ve also got more integrations on the way – which will make things like Farm Dairy Records faster too, so there’s a lot of benefit in making sure that you’ve got your apps all connected. We’ll let farmers know when more of these are ready,” says Hayley.
Farmer Feedback
The checklist was initially trialled with a few hundred farmers, to make sure that it worked and to iron out any issues.
“The feedback we’ve had from farmers has been incredibly positive. One of my favourite stories is a farmer who was really nervous for his upcoming assessment because he found it confusing and stressful getting all the right documents together. He called his Farmer Support and Relationship Advisor who told him about the checklist and he gave it a go. We heard back from him after his assessment – he said it was the easiest assessment he’d ever had,” Hayley says.
The savings for farmers aren’t just in preparing for assessment.
“We’ve heard from some farmers that their assessment times have been as short as 40 minutes – the whole process is just a bit more streamlined.”
The online checklist is available for any farmer with an upcoming Farm Dairy Assessment via the Farm Source website.
If you’d like support with using the checklist, reach out to your local Farmer Support and Relationship Advisor. If you haven’t already spoken to them, you can find their details in the My Co-op App, under the “Contacts” tab.