Silver Fern Farms has partnered with Wellington-based Lynker Analytics to form a new company, Prism Earth, to help farmers better understand and capitalise on their natural vegetation and biodiversity.
Managing director of Prism Earth Matt Lythe told the Farmers Weekly In Focus podcast the company will help primary producers face up to critical challenges such as developing diversified revenue streams, adjusting to changing climatic conditions, meeting emissions targets and responding to changing buyer behaviour.
“Prism delivers an integrated set of capabilities that allow us to document in some detail landscapes, catchment scale or farm scale, in order to really look at that land use problem – what’s the best and highest value use of land?
“It also does carbon and biodiversity mapping, climate risk analysis and farm-scale land use simulation to help farmers understand, budget for and adapt to climate and biodiversity challenges and opportunities,” Lythe said.
The technology will underpin SFF’s zero carbon red meat programmes and it has been approved by Toitū EnviroCare, the leading certifier in New Zealand.
And it will be available to any farmer, not just SFF suppliers.
“We’re ambitious for New Zealand and while we found a really great alignment of values with Silver Fern, their nature-positive goals, we are very much about trying to share this knowledge and information widely.”
Alongside artificial intelligence (AI), Prism also uses sensor data, geospatial analytics and visualisation software to deliver its services.
Lythe said Prism will not only support primary producers to realise the potential from their on-farm vegetation and biodiversity, but also help them to prepare for the impacts of climate change and increasing trade and market requirements.
“Future climate has the potential to drive major shifts in land use. These impacts won’t be distributed equally, and the level of adaptation needed will depend on location, land use and exposure of the farm,” Lythe said.
“As previously suitable climatic conditions change, it is likely that pasture yields will shift and summer water demands will increase. Nitrate leaching could also be more variable, erosion rates can increase, and increasing heat stress could affect animal welfare and milk production from dairy cows.
“We’re also seeing growing global requirements on a range of sustainability measures, through which trusted and verifiable data will play a key role in supporting farmers to navigate market access and realise the opportunities available,” he said.
Prism will work extensively with catchment groups to model science-based, long-term land use adaptation in economic, environmental, social and cultural terms. This work will begin at Arai Te Uru Awa, a 23,000 hectare hill country catchment 10km southwest of Gisborne.
