gps Archives - Agri-EPI Centre

Tag Archive for: gps

Virtual fencing for livestock: Nofence

Nofence began in a small Norwegian town named Batnfjordsøra, many years ago when their Founder and CTO, Oscar Hovde, set about making his idea of virtual fencing for livestock a reality. As the concept grew, so did the interest. The man with a plan soon became people with a purpose: getting animals out on pasture where they belong. And with the help of their customers whose input, innovation, and patience continue to be an integral part of their product development, Oscar’s idea blossomed. Today, NoFence are a team of international professionals with a set of shared goals: to support livestock farmers, improve animal welfare, and restore the fertility of our soil.

Nofence has created the world’s first virtual fencing for livestock: using GPS and cellular communication technology built into special collars to help farmers graze animals on pasture without the need for traditional penning and electric fences. Their vision is to improve animal welfare and make it easier for farmers to rear animals, as well as promote sustainable food production and help people to make better use of pasture resources throughout the world.

NoFence is one of the many agri-tech innovators in residence at Agri-EPI Centre’s Midlands Agri-Tech Innovation Hub, where the availability of all kinds of agricultural expertise and access to commercial farms for trials and research offers practical benefits to their agri-tech solutions. Since joining the Midlands hub in April 2021, Nofence has expanded with 7 new employees and has increased its customer base from 25 to over 400 at present. From distributing their first 400 collars in 2021, they are now at over 6500+ and have been featured on BBC Countryfile, BBC One show and GB News.

Read the Nofence case study below for more information:

Nofence 

 

Farm walk brings together agri-tech community at Upper Nisbet Farm

   

   

 

This month Agri-EPI hosted another successful on-farm day in Scotland at one of their innovation farms, Upper Nisbet Farm, in collaboration with farmers Robert, Jac and Andrew Neill.

Agri-EPI members and representatives from across the agri-tech sector met up for a farm tour and day of networking, discussions, and precision tech demonstrations.

Autonomous grain storage monitoring company, Crover, showed a live demo of their grain swimming robot.

Lorenzo Conti, Founder and Manging Director, explained:

“The main aim is to help farmers like Rob, but also grain storage operators and grain merchants, to store large quantities of grain to maintain the quality of their stock, to better plan their businesses, and also to improve the health and safety of their operations”.

KEENAN, a respected leader in sustainable and profitable farming solutions focused on maximising feed efficiency, demonstrated their mixer wagon in action. Datamars, who enable the harnessing of data to measurably improve productivity and quality of life for livestock farmers, demonstrated their Tru-Test range. And John Deere, leading manufacturers in agricultural machinery, discussed their GPS and data collection tractor technology.

Farmer Robert Neill rounded out the day by leading a trailer ride to view the arable fields and cows and calves.

Ross Robertson, Head of Mixed Farms at Agri-EPI Centre, said:

“This kind of in-person networking and collaboration is invaluable to us as an organization, as it allows us to engage with our members and farmers alike to get genuine feedback on the products we are involved with. As we all know it has been a difficult past couple of years for all businesses in the sector, and getting back on farm and meeting face-to-face at events like this will help everyone progress in what they are trying to do in benefitting the Agricultural sector”.

As a key, government-backed player in the agricultural sector, Agri-EPI Centre has been able to enlist a network of farms spread throughout the UK to participate in the Agri-EPI Farm Network.

They equipped these farms with a suite of precision sensor technologies to measure variances across every dimension of food production – quality, productivity, wastage, and more. From there, they are able to begin implementing the technologies and innovations that will change the future of farming, and assess the ways in which they can work together to bring these ideas to full commercial viability.