Australian agritech provider AgPick Technology is calling on growers to input into a six-month analytics development project in a bid to empower them with better tools to enable data-driven decisions.

AgPick chief executive officer Henrietta Child said the project, to be conducted progressively, would focus on the design and development of an analytics dashboard to add value to the real-time reporting data currently provided by its AgPick Blue and AgPick Orchard scanning tools and reporting portal.

The tool captures key information such as harvest yields and labour costs and identifies individual picker productivity, among other features.

She said AgPick welcomed collaborative input on the analytics project from both existing and potential customers.

“We store year on year data, and for many of our customers who are using the AgPick system to manage their labour, we now have a significant stored database of specific information such as performance data for farms, blocks and crops. The potential for this year-on-year comparative data has triggered our thinking to go beyond the short-term reporting of captured data to effective and accessible analytics,” she said.

The goal of this next phase of our development is to help growers achieve the best possible value out of their stored data so they can more effectively manage their day-to-day operations and critically evaluate labour and other farm costs.

“Growers will benefit from operational analytics that provide deeper insights into current and prospective KPIs and how their operation is tracking overall. The data will give them more enhanced tools to inform decisions about managing their labour or improving their processes,” she said.

Ms Child said interested growers would be working with agronomist Hitasha Singh who has come on board as an intern with AgPick Technology and will be managing the project.

Ms Singh is undertaking her Master of Business Administration degree specialising in project management at Kaplan Business School, Melbourne. She has a Master of Agriculture Science from the University of Queensland and a Bachelor of Science Agriculture from Punjab Agricultural University, India and is employed as a technical officer at a large-scale orchard operation in Victoria.

“Hitasha is ideally placed to lead this project, we are delighted she is going to take this on for us,” Ms Child said.

“Growers who are willing to share their views and ideas on what makes an effective system to support decision-making are welcome to get in touch. If growers have views about the style, content and presentation of the analytics dashboard, we are keen to know from a user’s perspective. We’ve always been about putting control in the hands of the grower and working to make our system as easy to use and understand as possible.

“Growers who are not an existing AgPick customer will gain full access to our system for the duration of the project and potentially influence how the dashboard is developed. We expect this development to be undertaken in a series of incremental mini projects we call sprints. This means we can roll out the benefits to existing customers as soon as possible.”

Australian citrus and cherry growers, as well as other growers across the fresh produce spectrum where hand-picking is involved, rely on the AgPick system to manage harvest and other farm activities such as pruning, thinning out and bunch counting to name a few.

AgPick has been instrumental in helping Australian growers achieve piece-rate compliance (including keeping accurate records and calculating top-up payments) since Horticulture Award changes came into effect in 2022.

To take part in the analytics project, growers should contact AgPick Technology on (08) 7127 1095 or email info@agpick.com 

More information on the app is available at www.agpick.com