The brainchild of Co-op farmers Scott and Brenna Townshend, and Gareth Lash, Trev has been a welcome entrant offering a simple, no fuss software solution for farmers to monitor productivity, profitability, sustainability and make reporting a cinch.
Scott Townshend, CEO, says "farmers are generally time poor and expected to be a ‘Jack of all trades’. We wanted to create a solution that allowed farmers a pain free way to collect and use all their information that also worked with other platforms and other stakeholders. Something that added value and was actually useful."
"Rather than having the information mothballed in a spreadsheet, Dropbox or Google Drive, Trev offers a living, breathing, strategic asset for farmers to call upon. Farmers can bring in historical information from their farm into the software and use it to compare year-on-year data. Or they can pick a point in time and start from there."
Information is added to Trev as it comes to hand – such as a feed purchase or livestock movement. At the end of the week, the farmer (or manager) can "shut the gate" on the week with information collated in a templated short report.
"The weekly roundup takes less than 10 minutes. It’s breaking those annual reporting requirements into these ‘little and often’ bite-sized pieces and farmers can add information ad hoc during the week. Trev gleans data from those daily interactions and can give insights in real-time. Farmers also have the opportunity to build data sets that are strategic assets, that they can shape and use," Scott says.
"Down the track this will be especially important with agriculture entering the Emissions Trading Scheme, and greenhouse gas returns and declarations to the IRD. Trev offers farmers a tool to shape their own high quality data to be able to do a self-declaration, much like they do with GST."
For Co-op farmers, Trev makes regulatory reporting simple as it is able to convert the data into the format required by other stakeholders. For example, data captured throughout the season in Trev can be displayed in the same Farm Dairy Records template required by Fonterra. Farmers can also extrapolate information from Trev and use it for their own business purposes.
"Our number one value at Trev is ‘farmer first’ – as farmers we know what we need on farm and how we want to use it."
"Take the190kg N/ha/year cap limit for example. With Trev we’ve been able to demonstrate and track actual nitrogen application and show that even with application levels below the cap, there was no change in pasture growth and further, there was no detrimental impact on milk production. It has been a great case study where the sustainability, productivity, and profitability boxes were all ticked," Scott says.
Trev’s Ngatea-based team is on hand to help farmers set up their Trev system and provide ongoing support as required in real-time.
The software package works on farmers’ existing computers and mobile devices so there’s no expensive outlay of additional computers or displays.
"There are some packages out there that you need a manual to operate. We designed Trev to be easy to use from the outset and the feedback we’ve had is that it very much is. I recently had a farmer tell me unprompted how easy she’d found Tree to use and how it had saved her business so much time and hassle. When they moved farms they’d encouraged the new land owners to get Trev to simplify communication and reporting."
Continually improving the product is a goal of 2024 and the Trev team is building its integrations for interoperability and scalability.
The benefits of Trev:
- Make Reporting Easy: Reduce annual farm reporting requirements with Trev. Reporting is a piece of cake when it takes less than 10 minutes a week.
- Make Better Decisions: Using Trev as your source of truth means you get the benefit of insights to help drive your production and profitability objectives.
- Trev's FDR Report: Reduce time you spend on farm dairy records with a report that hosts a lot of the info you need to complete your Co-Operative Difference requirements.
- Make Info Accessible: Share Trev reports with your trusted circle including data to financial software providers, processors or organisations that determine your farm’s licence to operate.
Find out more at mytrev.com/farmsource.