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The Digital Executive
Andrew Coppin: Bringing Real-Time Water Monitoring to Ranchers Across the Globe | Ep 1083
00:16:12
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Andrew Coppin. As the co founder and CEO of ranchbot, Andrew Coppen is helping ranchers across the USA use remote monitoring solutions to optimize their water management and operations. He is also the co founder and managing director of Farmbot, a pioneer in IoT of agriculture that has changed the face of water management in rural Australia and the world. He has a keen interest in the global agri food system and the challenges of feeding the world with limited resources. With over 10 years of experience in co founding and leading agritech companies, Andrew is passionate about developing innovative solutions that improve farm and ranch productivity, profitability and sustainability. He has a strong background in finance strategy and growth investing as well as a proven track record of launching and scaling disruptive technologies in the agricultural sector. Well, good afternoon Andrew. Welcome to the show.
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A
Great to be here Brian. Thanks for having me.
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B
Absolutely. My friend. I appreciate it and love the fact that you're in the same time zone as I am today, but you were kind of a transplant out of Australia, as down under as we like to.
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Say, or you like to say.
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B
But I really appreciate you doing what you do and be able to make the podcast today. So Andrew, jumping right into your first question, you you've been a pioneer in the IoT for agriculture through both ranch bot and farmbot. What inspired you to focus on remote water monitoring as your core innovation?
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A
Yeah, you know, I sort of grew up in Australia and in Western Australia, about one of the most remote places on the planet. And my father had farming and ranching operations over there. And I spent a fair bit of time on farms and ranchers and did my share of driving around checking water that 95% of the time didn't need checking for the 5% of times that it does because it's such a critical thing to do. I went into a professional career in finance for 25 years and then came back to agriculture or ag tech about 10 years ago after I sort of retired from my finance career and I was looking for other things to do and I came across my co founder Craig Hendricks, who was a technologist. And we got together and thought there's a problem worth solving here, which is the fact that hundreds of thousands of ranchers and farmers drive around the country every day checking water. That again, 95% of the time doesn't need checking, but for the 5% of times that it does because it's critical. The issue is sort of was and is hidden in the job. It's one of those things that until it's solved and solved really well, people don't realise the huge expense and time they spend driving to check water. There is no line in the P and L that says driving to check. So we realized there was quite a big problem here and it was a huge cost and burden to the industry and that if we could solve it really, really well and affordably and efficiently that it could become a material business. And here we are today on over 4,000 ranches with about 12,000 people logging into our platform every week.
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B
That's awesome. I love the story. Again, this goes back to how we're making the world a better place. Having that background. Growing up in Western Australia, like you said, one of the most remote places in the world to do farming and ranching is certainly something to learn from growing up. I like how you, when you jumped into your second career or maybe you thought about retiring out of the finance space and you jumped into ag tech and your solution to the world's water problem is that checking. And that's what we're going to dive into a little bit more. So thank you. Andrew. How does Ranchbot help ranchers in the US tackle the day to day challenges of water management, especially in vast or remote grazing operations?
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Yes, well, obviously here in the US where there's hundreds of thousands of ranches tending to tens of millions of beef cattle, again people are spending a lot of time driving to check things. The F250 or the Dodge Ram doesn't run cheap wear and tear on motor vehicles, gas, the availability of labor, this huge time and cost burden on people producing our red meat protein is enormous. And frankly the process has not changed for sort of 50 years. A lot of ranchers just feel like that is my job, it's part of ranching to drive and check. But the issue here we are now living based out of our office here in Texas. I mean vast tracts of Texas were over 100 degrees today. And if you're having days of day in, day out, week in week out of over 100 degrees, I mean you're really having to go and check water every day or every second day. If you've got cattle out in pastures, in remote areas, branches spend a lot of time worrying about this. And so they can't, it's sort of they climb the wall of worry every day until the point they have to go and check again and then they check and go. That's great. So you think about today maybe 500,000 people in agriculture driving to check water that doesn't need checking. But the irony of that is one minute after they checked it, they still don't know what's happening. And so it's sort of play, repeat, play, repeat, climb the wall of worry, relieve the pressure and then go and do it again a few days later. I just figured there had to be a better way to do that. And so by providing real time remote monitoring to farmers and ranchers via our sensors that talk direct to satellite so they can operate anywhere and tell them when there's a problem, when there is a problem, just frees up an infinite amount of time for them to be able to work on all the other things that they need to work on on the ranch. And of course, I've never met a rancher with time on their hands. I've never met a rancher with a bottom on the to do list. And I've never met a rancher that's had water problems happen right in front of their eyes. The water problems always happen, you know, wherever you were yesterday or the first holiday or vacation you've had in two years, or, you know, Friday night on your wife's birthday. You know, it's like water problems at Murphy's Law and agriculture seem to be closely linked. So there's this huge embedded cost, there's the tyranny of driving to check, to not know one minute after you've checked. And obviously, the bigger the property and the vast, more vast it is and the rougher the roads and the more mountains you've got to go up and down. The bigger the cost, the bigger the wear and tear, the bigger the time burden again, to be able to provide technology that resolves that issue and allows ranchers to wake up in the morning and check all of their water assets. Pumps, tanks, pipes, for leaks, for issues, for water levels, for flow rates in real time, while they're having a coffee to decide what am I going to do today? To prioritize my priorities is just a huge relief to them. And what I hear the most commonly is that we're just saving them huge amounts of time and money. We're talking in the tens of thousands of dollars for the average rancher. And maybe even more importantly, we're giving them peace of mind. We're letting them know what's happening in the areas of the ranch they cannot see or they are not at. And so it's just a real pleasure to be able to work with people on the land and to provide something that's a real definitive Benefit to them with an ROI that's, you know, normally our technology's paid for itself inside six months and definitively inside 12. So that's how we're impacting them with that real time reporting of water and infrastructure.
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B
That's awesome. I appreciate that. It's interesting, you know, if you think about it, for thousands of years, essentially part of ranching was to drive or ride your horse to go and check the water. But you're really taking the worry and guesswork out of water, checking whether it's flow rates, pumps, water levels, et cetera. But I like that your technology is real time. It allows for ranchers to be more efficient, be more productive, reduce their anxiety, providing that peace of mind, especially those large ranches as you know, we have in Texas or Australia. I like the ROI turnaround time you mentioned, anywhere between six and 12 months. So I think that's amazing. Thank you. Andrew. Agriculture is notoriously slow to adopt new technology. What strategies have you found most effective in driving tech adoption among ranchers and farmers?
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Yeah, well, I think sometimes ranchers and farmers get a tough call that they're slow to adopt. I mean, ranchers and farmers, all the ones I know, you know, they're up at four in the morning and they're knocking off when the sun's setting. It's a busy life and there's a lot to do and things don't always go according to plan. And you know, ranchers are doing that and farmers are doing that by choice. It's a lifestyle, it's not a chore. But still, to adopt new things and new technology that's unproven and not definitive about the benefit is the challenge for most people in agriculture, and that's pretty much universally known, that ag is the sort of least digitized sector on the planet. And in that I'd say ranching is probably the least digitized of the least digitized. But I don't feel that's because the farmers and ranchers aren't progressive and innovative. I think they really truly are. It's more a case of their time and the effort required to adopt and to do new things. And also there's a lot of cultural heritage and things that around farming and ranching that they want to maintain. It's the reason they do what they do. So we've found that delivering really simple solutions that have immediate impact on how they do things is critical. It has to fit in with their day to day lifestyle and schedule and for them to be easy to understand and install all of our technology At Ranchbot can be installed within five or 10 minutes by a ranch hand. Previous versions of technology in this space required erecting towers and pouring concrete and involved the words that no rancher ever wants to hear, which is, we will send a technician. I mean, when ranchers here, we'll send a technician, all they think about is the gate will be left open, there's a risk someone will get bogged, someone will start a fire, someone will leave rubbish. It's challenging. So in Ranchbot we decided in our DNA if we couldn't put everything that they're gonna need in the box, send it to them, know that they can install it on their own within 10 or 15 minutes without reading the instructions. It had to be intuitive because they wouldn't read the instructions, they'd just try and work it out. That's what farmers and ranchers do. And so we adopted that approach. And I mean that's allowed us to get tens of thousands of our devices out in the field. And again in this area we have people call us and say, oh wow, when you said simple, you really meant simple, you know, like you meant 10 minutes. And that's what it took me. We hear them being surprised because I think often they get told things will take a short period of time, but they don't. So I think the real key to helping farmers and ranchers and those in agriculture adopt new technology is provide a product or a service that has true benefit to their day to day operations, has true ROI that they can feel and is tangible and make installation and the use of that product super, super simple. And that's what we've tried to do. Ranchbot, the platform that the ranchers log into to check their water, for example, has a traffic light system of red, orange and green flags. Red is bad, green is good, orange is something's not quite right. So. So you can look at all of your pumps, your tanks, your rainfall, your troughs, everything at a glance on a map and know whether you've got a problem or not. That is simple and that is saving time and money for a rancher. And so it's the simplicity of the delivery of the product and the service that is also critical in our view.
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B
That's awesome. Thank you for sharing. Obviously, ranchers and farmers do have one of the most busiest lifestyles. I think we've all been there. I did that as a kid actually. And typically they're the last to adopt technology. You know, there's a lot of obstacles out there. You mentioned time, effort, costs and cultural items that prevent them from taking on this tech or having that tech adoption. But you're making it so easy for these ranchers to quickly plug and play with your technology platform and with the quicker adoption and having that true ROI and the simplicity makes it real, real easy for these folks to start having that peace of mind. So I appreciate that. Last question of the day, Andrew. Looking ahead, what emerging technologies or trends in agri food systems are you most excited about? And how is Ranchbot positioning itself for the future?
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So Ranchbot's always prided itself on only innovating around the things that our customers really need and issues that they've identified. So every year we're just actually doing it. It's currently open right now. We go and survey our customers and say, look, here's 10 things that we've seen or that you've asked for over the course of the last 12 months. Tell us, rank them in order of importance and then we try and deliver the top three things that our customer base asks for. So last year, for example, they asked for remote pump control, the ability to turn pumps on and off remotely. They asked could ranchpot be connected to weather stations. And we've just launched alliance with two large weather station companies, Davis and Spectrum, that now can plug and play into the back of a ranch pot, you know, and they ask for security cameras, pan tilt zoom security cameras to be able to talk to the ranch pot so they can have it on the platform. No rancher I've ever met, no person I've ever met wants seven apps to run the farm or the ranch. So we're trying to collaborate with other technologies and provide more ways to remotely manage the key issues and opportunities on the ranch. I think the survey is current at the moment for us. So in a week's time I'll know what, what's been voted the most popular things that our ranching community really want. But I think the things that are exciting me and the things that we're seeing that are going to really make a change for the future is virtual fencing. And where that's going, I think that'll take a step change with new satellite technology coming to the market over the coming years so that the costs of facilitating virtual fencing will go down because the technology will come from space. I think AI cameras and computer vision are really going to make some significant headroad in agri innovation and ranching innovation. I mean, we're working on trials at the moment that are allowing us to identify and weigh cattle without touching them and to know which cattle drank today and which cattle did not drink which would be of significant benefit to ranchers. You know, obviously cattle not drinking is a tell that they're not well. And obviously if they can identify and get approximate weights of cattle without having to bring them into the pens, then that's going to save them a lot of time and money. So you know, look, I think they're probably two of the biggest innovations that we're seeing that I think are going to have a very material impact on ranching and farming operations over the next decade. But you know, we're constantly on alert for new and better ways to do things specifically that are of true benefit to significant ranching community and hundreds of thousands of branches that we will serve in into the future.
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B
That's amazing. Thank you Andrew. Just kind of highlight a couple things. I know you really are into ranch bot. You're obviously innovating around what the farmers and ranchers truly need. And I really liked that you're listening to the customer at the end of the day but having controls for remote pumps and pan tilt zoom cameras and provide more of that all inclusive, more full service solution. And of course looking to the future, you're already looking at some of that new technology, whether it be geofencing with satellites using AI, improved computer vision and and the livestock health updates, I think those are critical to your livestock and provide some time back to the ranchers and farmers. So again, appreciate you highlighting all that Andrew. It was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
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A
Thanks very much for the opportunity Brian. It was great talking with you.
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Bye for now.