Cultivating Success: How this Agri Service Provider is Empowering New-Era Farmers with HYDRA

Challenge

Before implementing HYDRA, the service provider grappled with operational challenges such as time-consuming physical visits to various sites to oversee operations and lack of close monitoring of farming practices at the training farm, resulting in poor crop quality and consequential financial losses. They also suffered increased travel expenses due to frequent site visits.

Their attempt to solve this problem with an offline monitoring tool proved unsuccessful as the tool required manual intervention, making it impractical for their diverse and widespread operations.

Solution

HYDRA was implemented to digitise crop operations as well as track the training courses offered by the service provider, including student registrations, attendance and results.

So, why did they choose HYDRA? Because HYDRA understands their unique needs.

• It is designed exactly for what they need, as opposed to a boxed product offering.
• Focuses on providing real solutions instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Super easy to put in place and use.
• Has a dedicated team that took the time to understand what they really needed.

The implementation was smooth, and HYDRA's dedicated team focused on understanding the business to provide a service that truly meets their needs.

Impact

By leveraging HYDRA's real-time visibility, unnecessary travel has been cut down, resulting in a substantial reduction of visits by 52%, from 14 visits to 6, saving them 178 hours a month. This has enabled the team to spot potential issues early, allowing for proactive management and addressing problems before they escalate. As a result of the reduced travel, they are saving over R7 500 a month on fuel.

The service provider has found particular value in HYDRA's real-time data access and ease of use. Information can be captured as it happens, shared swiftly and accurately. This streamlined communication has been a game-changer for their operations.

The implementation of HYDRA has significantly enhanced real-time monitoring of crop production cycles on the farm, providing better visibility and improved oversight of herbicide, pesticide, and fertiliser application programs. The feature that allows photo uploads has been invaluable in identifying pests and diseases, enabling timely adjustments to spraying programs to boost yields and reduce costs. The cost of time spent on the farms saw a 28% reduction, equating to savings of R114 180 and 407 hours per month.

Monitoring crop growth, harvesting, and sales has seen marked improvement due to daily updates on HYDRA. The moisture sensor data has been used to refine irrigation and fertigation techniques, enhancing productivity. It also serves as a practical demonstration of agritech for learners at the farm. Profit and loss data for each field, even if on a smaller scale, can be accessed effortlessly through these uploads. This data equips both learners and the service provider to make better-informed farming decisions.

HYDRA has also provided a transparent view of revenue generation and operational expenses. This clarity has boosted morale across the team, with information shared instantly, offering a comprehensive view of operations on-demand.

Increasing the visibility of the impact outcomes of their funding on the small farmers they are servicing also assisted in helping them secure an additional R30m in funding from their financiers for their programme and operations.

"The Awareness Company is committed to delivering a solution that aligns with our business requirements. They take care to avoid non-essential hardware and costs so that the solution is affordable and user-friendly." says the Managing Director of the service provider.

The Future with HYDRA

The service provider sees a bright future with HYDRA. They plan to introduce it to their new-era farmer base to enhance visibility of farming operations, providing insights into the farmers' performance. This will also help them to understand the true extent of their impact on these farmers.

In terms of overcoming future challenges, they believe HYDRA will aid in better management of warning signals, provide precise control over input costs, and allow an easy desktop-level view of multiple farming operations for improved management reporting.

With HYDRA by their side, this agri service provider is on a journey towards a more efficient, sustainable future, transforming challenges into opportunities, one data-driven decision at a time.