As Chief Digital Officer at Ballance Agri-Nutrients, David Healy leads a team innovating in an industry that is facing challenges and uncertainty.

Farmers and growers came together over 60 years ago to form the co-operative with the primary purpose of providing an affordable and reliable source of nutrients. The local manufacture and supply of fertiliser is fundamental to New Zealand’s food and fibre sector and New Zealand’s economy. “Enabling productivity on a lighter footprint is more important than ever as our customers are challenged to get more from less, this was at the forefront of our minds as we navigated the digital landscape for the last two years,” says Healy.

To this end, the team has further developed its customer digital and geospatial abilities to enable customers to visualise their farms through the MyBallance platform.  It also includes a soil health check tool that informs farmers about the health of their soil – biological and chemical - to ensure optimal nutrient performance.

Healy says they have also enhanced their SpreadSmart® technology, utilising machine learning. They can now automatically identify areas of scrub, bush, tussocks, gullies, waterways, and stock camps from space, which are then excluded from an application map, meaning fertiliser is applied where it’s needed, reducing environmental impacts whilst also providing an increased return on investment for customers.

To further drive efficiencies and accuracy alongside this innovation, they created a geospatial flight planning tool, Super Air, to improve the efficiency and accuracy of topdressing application. 

By making aerial fertiliser application more precise, run-off and unnecessary damage to waterways is reduced, says Healy. Of the 12.5 million hectares farmed in New Zealand, 8.5 million hectares is classed as ‘hill country’ where sheep, cattle and deer are farmed. The vast majority of this hill country is fertilised using fixed-wing aircraft. With hill country the biggest tranche of farmed land in New Zealand, the majority require fertiliser to continue to be productive.

The app outputs a detailed pricing report showing optimised modelled flight paths, a breakdown of costs, estimated product use (in tonnes) and the number of flights required to do the job.

“With these initiatives we can reduce the ‘spreadable area’ by 17% on average - a direct benefit and saving to the farmer and a market leading customer value proposition. The app then ensures we are optimised in terms of how we fly the job minimising the number of runs required, optimising swath by removing any pilot led guesswork. The tool is calculating within a 5% accuracy of actual fertiliser spreading costs once the job is completed,” says Healy.

Ballance also embarked on a multi-year cloud program to improve productivity, digital agility, and speed to market, with the same premise facing their customers “how do we get more from less”. The team has completed the first phase of this program, migrating to SAP cloud solutions, SAP S/4HANA cloud and SAP Business Technology Platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The migration was achieved in five months. 

“This initiative has enabled reduction in support by 20% and demand on internal resources by 10%, allowing a shift in focus to driving more on-farm productivity ensuring the right product, to the right place, at the right time and right amount,” says Healy.

Imagination fuelling innovation

To ensure that digital is seen as both an enabler and driver of change, Healy says they have created forums at the executive and board levels to ensure that digital is being considered, adopted, and driven to deliver engaging customer value propositions.

Due to the success of Ballance’s geospatial, ML, AI and analytics technology, they have also formed a dedicated steering committee, consisting of executives and commercial leaders across the organisation. This group finds and prioritises innovations which drive value and return on investment on-farm for customers, utilising customer centred design thinking “to ensure we think like the customer, not just about the customer.”

“Creating a culture and environment that facilitates collaboration and innovation is critical, encouraging a growth mindset and enabling people to be curious, which is one of our core values at Ballance “Imagination – Fuels Us”. The mundane becomes exciting for curious people. They look at things differently, challenge the status quo, and ultimately drive innovation for customers. That’s why we have built imagination into our culture. We believe you can innovate from any seat, however, we also have several cross functional groups in the business whose roles are purely to do curious work and challenge what we know to ensure it is given focus and time.”