Rural

FarmIQ pivotal for equity partnership

Sheep and beef farmer, Rob Buddo is in an equity partnership with a young farmer starting out his career. He joined REX to talk more about their top farm management tools

A Hawke's Bay sheep and beef farmer is helping the next generation in the industry.

Rob Buddo has entered into an equity partnership with a young farmer starting out his career, Chris Hursthouse.

Buddo told Rural Exchange at the latter end of his farming career, he wanted to help new blood come through with skin in the game.

"We see this as a pathway not only for him but also a pathway for us to look at keeping the business going in the future," Buddo said.

One of the best management tools the pair had in their equity partnership toolbox was FarmIQ and FARMAX to help with running five farms.

"We've got a fairly simple system that we run, but it's very complex in the way that we've run it over five blocks so it would be very hard to do if we didn't have good tools in place."

FarmIQ is a map-based farm management software where all everyday farming information could be stored in one place, supporting farmers to make data-driven decisions that improved performance and helped provide peace of mind ahead of audit time.

FARMAX is a modelling and decision support tool for farmers that accurately predicted the impacts of business decisions before they were made.

"We set that in place every year, we monitor against it and we review and refine what we're doing from it. It's really integral to what we do, we know where we're sitting all the time. If we're heading into a drought we know what that looks like, we adjust and we refine and we scenario test."

Listen to the full interview with Rob Buddo and Rural Exchange above.

This article was produced in partnership with FarmIQ and Rural Exchange.