Halter’s virtual fencing technology has just launched in the United States.
This month a team from Halter exhibited the technology at the AgMedia Summit in Kansas City, Missouri, where the product was launched to US agriculture media.
The virtual fencing tech has already been rolled out to farms in California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas and Louisiana.
Halter founder and CEO Craig Piggott said: “For years farmers in New Zealand and Australia have generated significant benefits from utilising the technology, and we’re excited to bring these same benefits to US cattle ranchers.”
There were now 200,000 cattle under Halter’s management in the US, New Zealand and Australia.
One of Halter’s first US customers is a dairy farm, but the rest are beef operations, which will make up the lion’s share of the target market in the US.
Halter is advertising three roles in the US, including two business development representatives and a country manager.
The business development roles will be located in either Colorado or Texas, with the country manager a flexible location.
There will be more roles advertised in future.
Piggott said the US represents a huge market for Halter.
It is the second largest beef market in the world after Brazil, and the addressable market is nearly 50% bigger than NZ.
“In December 2023, we expanded from dairy into beef, the US market opens up this beef market at a significant scale.”
New Zealand was still a priority target for Halter, with 4 million pasture-based beef cattle.
In the US there are roughly five times this amount of beef cattle.
“While there’s a mix of pasture and feedlot systems in America, at least 60% of all cattle spend time grazing pasture – which equates to about 20 million cattle.”
“We are targeting the pasture market, which is sizeable, and will largely be working with cow-calf and backgrounding beef operations.”
Pasture used for cattle, either grazing or feed production, is the largest single land use in the US.
The US has 263 million hectares of land used for cow pasture, plus nearly 52 million hectares for livestock feed.
“We can have a big impact on making that both more productive and more sustainable.”
“The US is a big step towards our goal of helping pasture-based farms and ranches run more productive and sustainable operations.”
“We have customers in the hundreds across New Zealand, Australia and the US, and for the last two years we’ve doubled our customer base and revenue, and we’re on track to do this again this year.”
“Since we expanded into Tasmania 20 months ago, Halter is on 20% of Tasmania’s dairy cows.”
In Focus Podcast | Making topsoil top of mind
A feature documentary film, Six Inches of Soil, has been screened in NZ cinemas recently. It follows three young British farmers through their first year of transitioning to regenerative practices.
The film has been brought here by regenerative farmer network Quorum Sense and its chair Becks Smith talks with Bryan about the network, the film and why we’ve been talking about regen the wrong way.
