This article was first published in The Land

2020 was a remarkable turn-around for many farmers in Australia, especially on the East Coast. After a multi-year drought, most growers were finally able to harvest a crop again, and at a national level it was even one of the largest crops in history. Moving from one extreme to another within a year is nothing new for Australian agriculture however, and something that growers around the country will likely have to contend with even more in future as weather patterns become more extreme.

Managing risks and rewards through this diversity of seasons is becoming increasingly more important for growers in many parts of the cropping area in Australia with unreliable rainfall. Rising input costs, fluctuating commodity prices and skyrocketing land values; how can growers ensure they remain profitable throughout varying seasons?

Increasingly, growers are turning to Agworld Farm Management to help manage their risks and rewards, and plan ahead for profitability. Agworld helps growers with production planning and budgeting, creating farm records, and post-season analysis of their performance. “We welcomed over 700 new Australian farm users to Agworld in 2020 alone”, according to General Manager for Agworld in Australia Simon Foley; “A strong signal that growers see value in digital information and increasingly want to partner with a strong and specialised software provider to support their farming operation.”

Agworld was founded in 2010 in Perth, where all the global software development still takes place, and is now available in New Zealand, the USA, Canada and South Africa as well. Agworld is currently one of the largest independently owned Farm Information Management System providers in the world. The most popular trademark of Agworld for growers and agronomists is that Agworld is independent and not aligned with any industry input provider, and no data is sold or transferred to any third party. “We believe that growers own their data, and we want them to take advantage of the value in this data; not other players in the supply chain”, according to Mr Foley.

Agworld is already used by over 85% of Australian agronomists, who create cropping plans, budgets and recommendations for their growers in Agworld. Mr Foley: “The advantage for growers is that when they decide to start using Agworld, their agronomist has most likely already been creating data for them in Agworld for a number of years. As soon as they log in to Agworld, they have the benefit of the data set up by their agronomist, like farm maps, plans, etc, talk about hitting the ground running!”

Mr Foley has recently noticed an increasing number of growers adopting Agworld specifically for the ability to quickly and simply create a cropping budget, and adapt this to market conditions as they change. Mr. Foley “The current fertiliser shortage is a good example of how Agworld helps growers: with MAP and DAP up around $200 over the last month and a half, and Urea up by around $120 over that same period of time, cropping budgets will change quickly and drastically.”

“Growers and agronomists tell us that they love the ability to work together on the same set of (cloud-based) data, and quickly see how certain changes affect the result. Whether the budget increases due to higher fertiliser prices, or the expected yield decreases due to lower fertiliser usage, Agworld can quickly and accurately show you each scenario and how it will impact your bottom-line.”

With grower subscriptions starting from $1495 per year, it’s easy to see why growers engage with Agworld and always realise a ROI on their software subscription according to Mr Foley. “When I talk to growers, they often compare their approach to software purchase decisions to how they purchase equipment: they want to buy the best quality available and be sure that they will have the excellent technical support available after purchase, which is why they choose Agworld.”