When agtechs work together for beef producers, one plus one can equal three

They’re some of the biggest names in Australian agtech – and they’re driving new frontiers in farm productivity, efficiency, and profit. 

AgriWebb, Farmbot, Cibo Labs, Pairtree and Optiweigh together help thousands of beef producers optimise the management of millions of animals and millions of hectares. And while their commercial impact is well known, what might surprise you is just how closely they work together to make beef production easier.   

evoke^AG. contributor Casey Dunn sat down with the five agtech leaders to find out why they’d rather collaborate than compete. And how producers are the ultimate winners.  

Five in a flash

But first – a quick overview of their agtech solutions.  

AgriWebb provides livestock management software that provides features and insights which help graziers manage the performance drivers that make their enterprise more productive.  

Farmbot offers remote monitoring solutions that take the guesswork out of measuring and analysing farm water sources. 

Cibo Labs delivers data analytics software that uses remote sensing and machine learning to unlock new understandings in pasture productivity and land condition. 

Optiweigh provides a portable, self-contained solution for measuring animal weights in real-time direct from the paddock, driving better productivity, pasture management, and returns.  

Pairtree consolidates the various data streams captured on-farm into one agnostic dashboard that enriches decision-making through a unified view across the entire operation.  

Q: Phil, Cibo Labs has been in the game for over five years now and achieved some really impressive wins on its own. What’s driving the desire to collaborate?

Phil Tickle, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Cibo Labs  

“I’ve been in this space since before agtech was ‘agtech.’ And part of my 35-year journey has been realising that I can’t be a specialist in everything.  

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What we’re seeing across the agtech industry now is the coming together of a bunch of very collegiate businesses who not only focus on what they’re good at, but at the same time, provide producers the ability to share and integrate across other specialty platforms. 

Because it’s not about trying to solve everything ourselves. It’s about doing what you’re good at and then collaborating to expand your impact.” 

Q: Bill, you broke new ground when you developed the Optiweigh solution – and it’s still unique in the market. I suppose I’m saying, you could just rest on your laurels and sell units?

Bill Mitchell, Founder, Optiweigh 

“Our specialisation is producing the Optiweigh units; making something really tough and reliable that you can chuck in the paddock, and it will send back the weights of the cattle.

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But we collaborate with many agtech companies [– including the folks alongside me today –] because we see lots of opportunities to take our data and link it with other data make even more gains with it.”  

“For livestock producers, us collaborating with other agtech providers means that 1 + 1 can = 3.” 

Q: Farmbot has achieved impressive commercial success – expanding across Australia and the US. Andrew, what’s behind your collaborative projects?

Andrew Coppin, Founder and CEO, Farmbot  

“Our focus is on water management, and specifically, telling farmers they’ve got a problem only when they’ve got a problem. Because today, 50,000 people will drive around Australian farms and check water that 95% of the time does not need checking.  

Andrew Coppin, Founder and CEO, Farmbot.

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We’re really in the business of saving time and money and giving people peace of mind. And to that end, we realised no one’s got time for seven apps to run a farm. So, we integrate with providers like AgriWebb, Pairtree and Cibo Labs, who share our passion for making farming easier.” 

Q: Phil, I’m interested in AgriWebb’s collaboration ‘why.’

Phil Chan, Chief Product Officer, AgriWebb  

“These guys grew up chasing cows and sheep while I was playing computer games. But I’ve spent the better part of 30 years in software development, and a really key piece is the integration side, especially when you’re trying to solve problems which are bigger than yourself.  

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To AgriWebb, that’s a population of 10 billion by 2050, which will need us to double food production on existing land while lowering greenhouse gases at the same time. It’s a huge problem statement, and there’s no one organisation that can solve it in isolation. That’s what pushes us forward to explore more and more collaborations.” 

Q: Hamish, the entire Pairtree business is underpinned on collaboration. Can you tell us your founder story?

Hamish Munro, Co-Founder, Pairtree 

“Back in 1999, before NLIS, my family would take our laptop to the yards to collect the data we needed to trade steers into the EU. But as we added more and more data, managing and trying to connect it became a real pain point.

Hamish Munro (right), Co-Founder, Pairtree.

So that’s where the idea for Pairtree came from, and now we’ve got over 100 different integrations [including the companies we’re sitting with here.]  

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Our specialisation is being the mortar between the agtech bricks. A key collaborator, rather than trying to compete by capturing the same data that these guys are already doing so well.” 

Q: Bill, you said earlier that, when agtechs collaborate, 1 + 1 can = 3. Can you give us an example?

Bill Mitchell, Optiweigh 

“I’ll give you an example from my business. We supply cattle into one of the supermarket grassfed programs, and they got a few of us producers together as a pilot to benchmark all our emissions per kilo of beef production. And the number one driver of the differences between us was our average daily gains.  

If you have an Optiweigh system that alerts you to situations where your average daily gains aren’t what you’d like them to be, and then you can dig into your Cibo Labs pasture data to find out why not and bring in your AgriWebb insights to take action to improve those average daily gains.” 

Q: Pasture and water are natural allies. Can you tell us, Phil, how Cibo Labs and Farmbot are working together?

Phil Tickle, Cibo Labs 

“We’ve got some great examples but a recent standout is where we took a time series of pasture biomass against a particular water point to tell producers not only how much feed they have within 5km of that water source, but how it’s performing.  

Is it senescing? Is it kicking up growth after a storm? Is it turning off too quickly?  

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Those insights can then help drive supplement management, or decisions around turning water points off in overgrazed areas to push those animals to a different area.” 

Andrew Coppin, Farmbot 

“Integrations mean we can end up with a scenario where the grazing data from Cibo Labs can be integrated to give real time alerts about there not being enough feed in the paddock for the number of cattle bring grazed; data from Farmbot can tell us there’s insufficient water given the number of head; data from Optiweigh can tell us the cattle have hit optimum weight, or they’re underperforming and it would be better to move them from field ‘a’ to field ‘b.’   

Feed + water + weight + all the other datasets that Pairtree brings to the table start presenting a whole new picture of what’s possible in a collaborative world.  

And it’s all upside for beef producers.