This is an episode of “Why Isn't It Working - Business & Tech Podcast” with hosts Karl Wood, Michael Hamilton and guests.
Today’s guest is Oli Madgett. Co-Founder at Platfarm Mobile Navigation Application for Farming and advisor to the Digital Technology Taskforce. Oli's family moved to Australia and commenced to operate a farm. They found that soil and vigour mapping insights into the variability showed a distinct change in soil type was splitting the vineyard. The Madgett’s knew they needed to invest in some heavy mulching — but not across the entire block.
There was no choice: the only way to let a contractor know where to start and stop work with the spreader was to print out the maps, and then go down every single vine row tying tape.
Oli noticed the inefficient practices. He was also an award winning game designer. From that perspective, the problem looked subtly but significantly different.
Could there be a simple, cost effective, and portable way of looking at both the digital maps and the real farm, and using that to guide practical action?
It would do away with a lot of the clutter and confusion, too — because there are so many maps, and there’s so much data, and it’s all only as useful as your capacity to keep track of it, organise it, and use it to direct decisions and tasks. Meeting Andrew, a developer from regional South Australia with a passion for spatial mapping, data, and agtech led to the first iteration of Platfarm.
In this conversation we discuss Oli's journey to date, the challenge in managing farms and in particular vineyards, the importance in using data and analytics to make decisions, common pain points across agriculture locally and internationally, the importance of agriculture in Australia for the coming decades, government involvement and much more.
Oli can be reached through:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ojsmadgett/
Business Website: https://www.platfarm.com/
Twitter: @ojsmadgett
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Why Isn't It Working - Business & Tech Podcast details:
Join Karl Wood & Michael Hamilton to discuss all things business and technology. The guys will bring you stories from the business side of tech.
With over 30 years of combined experience with strategic business & IT delivery. Karl and Michael will bring their true insights into IT and how they can help with your business.
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