Technology such as FarmHQ has the primary goal of helping farmers not only become more efficient but also save time as well as money.
David Wallace, who grew up on the farm but left to pursue chemistry and then eventually worked as a data scientist, created a system that can net up to a 1,500% return on investment over a season.
“These systems pump anywhere from 250 to 400 gallons of water per minute over a very small area of land. We can calculate directly how much pumping time and how much water is saved as a result of having our system on board. We also know very accurately how much driving time we’re saving farmers because we know the location of each one of their pieces of equipment, and we know where their home base is. So each time they open up that app to check on that piece of equipment, we’ve essentially saved them a trip to the field.” – David Wallace
The way FarmHQ works is that the small unit attaches to a central point on the irrigation system and uses cloud-based software to monitor irrigation reels and pumps.
David Wallace spent weeks playing with his code before testing it out across his farm, and as word spread, other farms wanted in on the time-saving device.
Now, FarmHQ is in its third year of development and used on about 30 farms across the Pacific Northwest, with plans to grow 10x more this year.
While farming at any scale will always be a challenging job, there are many ways to make it easier and significantly more efficient.
