As farmers grapple with rising costs, a Kiwi agritech ‘scale up’ is bringing relief in the form of a cost reduction. Halter - producer of smart cow collars and a corresponding farm management app - has now grown enough that it can slash its price by nearly 40 per cent, bringing greater accessibility to pasture farmers.
Born and bred on a Matamata dairy farm, Craig Piggott earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Auckland. Working at Rocket Lab in 2016, the then 22-year-old hit on the idea that would become Halter.
It’s a solar-powered, GPS-enabled cow collar and app that allows farmers to ‘virtually fence’ their properties and move cattle around, detect when cows are on heat or showing early signs of health issues, and optimise pasture growth and grazing to drive profitability. The collar and app can improve sustainability and compliance issues by, for example, directing stock away from waterways rather than having to install expensive fencing.
Launched to dairy farmers in 2019, some dismissed Halter as an expensive, luxury item. With upcoming developments, including a 37 per cent price drop for dairy farmers, it may be time for them to have another look.
The company has also launched the Pasture Pro product upgrade, doubled its customer base last year, and expanded into the beef sector in December.
Halter, Piggott says, “is a tool that helps farmers to be more efficient and more pro-active. It used to be predominantly for dairy but, since we’ve launched into the beef sector, it’s for any pasture-based farm with cattle.
“Farmers use it to virtually shift their stock around, and that enables them to be far better at managing their grass. So they end up growing and harvesting more grass, the land becomes more productive and more sustainable - and it’s a whole lot easier for the animals and the farmer.”
Piggott says now that the product has been available for three years, it’s become a critical tool in farming: “I think virtual fencing will soon be very much like a milking shed - no one milks cows by hand these days. You wouldn’t even think about going farming if you were going to milk cows by hand. Yet we’re still manually managing our grass.”
That was one of the reasons for extending Halter into beef farming. “I’m from a dairy farm and I knew that market best.”
Beef farming is a different proposition and Piggott believes Halter will be a gamechanger for the industry, because farmers can use virtual fencing to move cattle onto their often steep and hilly terrain without the need for expensive physical fences or manual labour.
This can unlock previously unproductive land, lift grazing efficiency and productivity per hectare, which ultimately drives profitability for beef farms.
Halter has been on a mission to lower its operating costs as it continues to grow, to make this new way of farming more accessible. Since April, the company has been able to pass on significant cost savings, opening the gate for dairy farmers to get started with Halter at 37 per cent cheaper.
Piggott says it’s rare – particularly in the current dairy downturn – for suppliers to lower their costs. Most are raising them.
He compares Halter’s ability to buck the trend to Tesla’s example, where the electric car manufacturer originally set out to offer a premium car, then gradually reduced its costs and pricing to produce more affordable models for the wider public.
“We spent 12 months working on how we could make our technology and costs more efficient. Of all our software costs, it’s the cost of running the service in the cloud that’s one of the biggest contributors, so we have made our current products cheaper to run. We have also optimised the costs of manufacturing the physical collars.
“In the current climate, everyone is trying to save and bring down costs because the price of everything’s going up. So we decided to do the opposite – a big push on cost savings – and we’re stoked to be able to pass them on to our farmers.
“Agriculture is a huge industry – it covers half the world’s habitable land mass. So the question is, how do you scale the technology globally? Bringing the price down, simplifying the tool as much as we can and innovating on cost is a huge part of that.”
Halter’s virtual fencing also offers an affordable and flexible solution for farmers to keep cattle out of fresh waterways. Dairy properties already must be compliant in this area but, in coming years, government regulations will require all farmers to do this.
Piggott says the cost of building physical fences on huge farm properties can be astronomical and could put some out of business.
“Governments and consumers are asking for more proof and more recordkeeping in this area. It doesn’t have to be harder, it’s not so much a matter of changing practices – we have world-leading agricultural products that are doing a lot of good stuff. It’s just a matter of tracing and showing the results to the consumer. There’s a great opportunity here.”
Already exporting to Australia, he says Halter is looking at entering a number of other overseas markets in the next few years.
For more information: halterhq.com/dairy