RHIZA Review

Technology never stands still, and this could not be truer than with agriculture. Ag Tech has been rapidly evolving over the past 10 years, and this progress shows no signs of slowing down.

As the industry adapts to new challenges and opportunities, software platforms are becoming increasingly central to not only suppliers, but the farm businesses themselves, serving as the touchpoint between technology, advice and farmers. A clear demonstration of this can be seen in the way that machinery manufacturers have taken telematics from a ‘nice-to-have’ to an integral part of the machinery sale. Furthermore, we now see the AgChem market coming to the fore, as they embrace innovative solutions that enhance efficiency and productivity on farm.

Within RHIZA, a significant milestone has now been reached as we transition away from our legacy software platform, Toolbox (APS). This migration is not just a technical upgrade; it opens the door to RHIZA’s continued development of the Contour platform into the next phases which include providing greater farm insights and land management tools. With more robust and flexible systems in place, we will better be equipped to analyse, interpret and integrate with others and provide answers to the data generated by farming businesses.

The end goal of this migration is to deliver a better service to farmers, empowering them with actionable insights and tools, which is often found lacking in farm management platforms. We aim to enable farmers to not only optimise inputs and make informed decisions but also to deliver a platform that allows farmers/advisers to react in real time to the challenges agriculture brings.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, RHIZA will focus on enhancing its land management tools to support growers in planning and implementing Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) practices at every level. SFI (and other environmental schemes throughout the UK) can become a significant part of a farm’s income stream and therefore needs to be planned in conjunction with the rest of the farm’s operations, not in isolation. The development of tools within Contour will not only assist in planning and evidencing SFI but also provide access to Agrii’s extensive knowledge base, offering farmers access to the advice and resources Agrii can bring beyond planning for the SFI application itself.

Alongside the land management module, we will continue to develop our BETA products such as Disease Forecaster and our cloud free imagery service, ClearSky. ClearSky has certainly proved its worth this spring with significant parts of the country suffering from lack of clear imagery to make Variable Rate Nitrogen plans. Not needing to rely on clear optical imagery, ClearSky stands out in the industry as a go-to option in a tricky season. With the new PRF1 (variable rate nutrient applications) SFI action seeing great interest from our customers, ensuring the capability of VR Nitrogen for a farm will be key to securing that payment.

Our disease forecasting tool will enter its second year of farm scale testing this year. With some positive results and plenty of learning from last season we hope to improve the service again. With the increasing focus on IPM and application justification tools like disease forecaster, this shows RHIZA’s commitment to providing tools to farmers that solve a problem rather than find a problem to solve.

We look forward to the next 12 months with RHIZA and bringing you regular updates on the platform and service.

For more information about RHIZA services, the latest updates or to find out how RHIZA could support your farming business, contact us by emailing info@rhizadigital.co.uk