A company committed to streamlining data access for farmers has created a new platform to make it easier for agribusinesses and consultants to connect with this information.
Pairtree Pipes was launched last month at AgriFutures Australia's evokeAg conference in Adelaide.
According to Pairtree founder Hamish Munro, this was the ideal place to launch the product as it is specifically targeted at CEOs and developers.
Previous Pairtree products have been focused on building platforms for farmers to look at their data - such as weather, markets and stock weights - in the one place.
"We sell integrations, not information. We're all about creating an integration or connecting something to something else, ensuring farmers get more value from their agtech," Mr Munro said.
"Rather than 'if you want this, you will have to buy that', farmers have choice and complete control over which sensor or app they purchase."
With Pairtree Pipes, agribusinesses, consultants or agtech companies can use a single application programming interface (API) instead of doing all their own integrations or connecting their clients' sensors.
Mr Munro said it was important for farmers and their consultants to be able to benchmark and compare information 'apples for apples'.
He said there were two ways for a business to connect with this information.
"There's the database, where all the information can be placed and stored securely, or there's our white label, which we can build the views and dashboards for that business if they don't have the ability to do that development," Mr Munro said.
"For Pairtree, our preference is to connect to a data source where the farmers are already collecting that information to save multiple data entries and minimise human error."
Mr Munro said lately the company had been focused on creating white labels to solve data issues for organisations like Syngenta and corporate cattle companies.
Pairtree will also soon start working with the CSIRO and GRDC on frost and heat stress modelling.
"In principle that still uses Pipes because we need weather stations to drive some of that modelling and calibrate some of that data," he said.
"But these models can also be connected back to sit with the other data, as per what we used to do for the farmers, where they can just add another data feed in to sit alongside their sensors or satellite feeds."
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Mr Munro was in San Francisco last week to attend the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit.
He said over the next 12 to 18 months the company also plans to do testing with a view to launching in the US.
Pairtree was one of 10 Australian agtech companies selected by SVG Ventures Thrive from more than 900 applications globally for its program to attend the summit.
Mr Munro said the event was investor focused rather than farmer focused but had been a really good networking opportunity.
"It was amazing to see what's happening and how different people are building solutions for farmers," he said.
"It was a really interesting glimpse into what the potential future holds."
