This week on the blog we continue our insights from Season Three of The Whole Story podcast, and this week we take a look at Beck’s conversation with Paul Ruddenklau and Emma Smith from Resolution. Paul is Resolution’s co-founder and director, and Emma is Agritech collaborator and support lead. This podcast episode dives into the unheard background of Paul and Emma, and the app’s journey to where it is today. This conversation digs into the nuts and bolts of the need for simple and effective data collection and communication on farm, the values behind the team at Resolution, and their work empowering farmers with farm data.
We take a look in this blog at some of the key insights and takeaways from their conversation.
What sustainability means to Paul and Emma
For Paul and Emma, what sustainability means to them has strong linkages to values such as legacy, pride, and empowering farmers.
Paul: So as farmers, we have a responsibility for the next generations coming that the way we farm today, and the way we evolve farming systems, is actually sustainable and it can continue into the future. So it’s really, really important that we put these things in place and we understand why we’re doing these things, and then grow as different industries as we move out. And, then from the Resolution side of it, we want to be here to empower farmers and to help along that journey to sustainability. So, we’re all about building functionality and features that make it easier for the farmer to record, store, and share that data. And, what we’re really striving to achieve is to create a legacy program that enables not just ourselves today, but also our children, our grandchildren, and beyond that, to benefit from the data that we’re recording and understanding better for food industry.
Emma: It’s definitely around being able to empower farmers to continue to be caretakers of the land and, like Paul said, empowering them to be able to set up a legacy where their children and grandchildren can continue to farm sustainably, which covers a whole lot of different aspects around looking after the environment and people and animals, and also running a financially secure business which enables you to continue to operate into the future, I think is really important for us in supporting farmers on that journey.
The story behind resolution
Resolution was born out of Paul trying to solve a problem that he and his agronomy clients were facing regarding data collection and storage all being done in paper form. Paul tried to adopt other software that were on the market but found that they were very specified in one area or another, and that they weren’t customisable. The structured data sets that they were trying to use just didn’t fit with what they were trying to achieve. This led Paul to coming up with the idea of building the software themselves and they built a very basic program to record, store, and share fertiliser information plus their day-to-day farm operation. At that stage of conception Paul never thought that there would be a lot of use for it except for himself and his clients, but as it evolved more components were incorporated, more people used the product, and it has continued to grow from there.
Paul: When you get a Resolution account, it doesn’t matter if you’re sheep, beef, dairy, fisheries, horticulture, arable – you can customise the program to do what you want it to do. And we’ve been very careful through the process of development that everything that we develop or enhance, it’s got more than one application to it, so it can really be moulded into what you want to do.
One of my biggest problems initially was being able to centralise everything into one place. So that goes back to the customisable part. For me to be successful, I had to be able to use an app that was going to work while I was out in the sheep yards and I could do multiple things on it at once and it didn’t matter what the data was, I could slap it in there and then come back to it later on. And then probably thirdly was getting everybody into that one place. So for us to be successful in farm or even with the agronomy business, we needed to open up a communication portal and allow everybody to contribute to that portal. So if it’s a junior staff member that has just started, there’s a value proposition for them. All of a sudden they’ve got a map, the GPS location that they know where they’re going to. That’s a value proposition for them because all of a sudden they can contribute straight away, even if they’re not necessarily putting in the best records for a start off. They’re actually bought into the system and away they go. If we’ve got a rural professional like an agronomist or a farm consultant that we’re using, they’ve got direct access into everything we do every day and they’re informed and can help immediately. If we’ve got a contractor, we can task out of Resolution that gives them the informed information that it’s not the paddock down past the willow tree on the left past the big rock.
What Resolution delivers for farmers, and the value of data capture
Paul: Quite often it’s the 1% things that are overlooked and have been overlooked by Agritech previously – some of the absolute basic things that will make the biggest difference.
Resolution have never lost sight of the fundamentals at the core of what they are trying to focus on delivering to their farming customers: usability, and ability to customise the program to suit what you are trying to do so that it makes sense to you and the people working on the property.
The value proposition of being able to effectively capture data on farm is huge. There is immense value in farmers capturing data for themselves, for their own farm management and business sustainability, first and foremost, and then meeting regulatory requirements, compliance needs, market access requirements etc. comes as a by-product of capturing that data.
Emma: I think it’s really key being able to find a balance between delivering the required data, but also being able to demonstrate meaningful outcomes on farm. I feel that Resolution offers an opportunity for farmers to centralise that data and be able to put it into a meaningful product that is able to be delivered out to the necessary parties that need it. But it’s also a way for farmers to be able to be empowered by understanding what information they need to be recording and also being able to keep it behind the farm gate, and then give access to the necessary data points that are needed.
Emma and Paul's Practical Take Home Tip
Emma: For me, this one would be to promote taking control of your data. Small actions do go a long way, and I guess the more that you put in, the more you’ll get out at the other end. And like you say, it’s not just from that compliance lens, it also supports your overall decision making, Because once you continuously start putting information into your account, then you’re able to see what you’ve done year-on-year and do a comparison. And, I think that’s really exciting to continue to operate sustainably. Paul: …don’t be scared of technology like I was from the start... It is very, very accessible. It is a journey, so you need to make a conscious decision yourself when you want to change. And that’s something that we really pride ourselves on doing too, that, you know, people that come through the gate have already made a conscious decision. Don’t be scared of it. You can start at your own level and develop your Resolution account how you wish to develop it. You don’t have to start at the same level as myself or even the salesperson that shows you through. You start at your own level, develop it out the way you want, and the journey is actually not complicated and it won’t bite.