How Farm Automation’s drones and AI are saving dairy farmers’ precious time

Farm Automation founder Krishnakumar Santhanam comes from a long line of dairy farmers and has professional experience working on AI products.

His latest journey started when a colleague asked if AI technology could be helpful on his brother’s dairy farm.

Using drones and AI, Farm Automation helps dairy farmers choose the right paddocks to graze their cattle on to optimise milk yields.

It is one of five brands shortlisted to compete at the Pitch, SmartCompany‘s early-stage startup competition, tomorrow night in Melbourne.

How Farm Automation helps dairy farmers

“Dairy farmers are the most time-poor people on earth,” Santhanam explained. “They don’t have weekends, they have to be there in the morning 5.30 til 7, then 2.30 till 4 in the afternoon; they can’t escape it.” Most run their farms as family businesses, which may have an additional few farmhands too.

The main objective of every dairy farm is to convert grass into milk. Currently, a farmer will walk the paddocks each morning to choose the right one to graze the cows on each day. It is a time-consuming and inaccurate process, and if the farmer doesn’t choose correctly, milk yield can go down. “The entire process is manual and prone to errors,” Santhanam explains.

That’s where Farm Automation comes in. A drone system flies over the paddocks, measures it using AI, predicts when each paddock will be optimum for grazing, and produces a schedule for the farmer. By doing that, Santhanam said, farmers can increase milk production by 15%, and also unlock further benefits in the long term such as healthier soil, better carbon absorption, and better water retention.

Satellite image-based pasture management solutions do exist, but Santhanam said these aren’t as accurate, “because they’re 800 kilometres up in the sky,” whereas drones obviously get a much closer look.

As it operates on a subscription model, farmers also avoid any capital expenditure to put the system into place.

Agriculture Victoria is currently assisting Farm Automation with data collection to prepare the startup for investments, and Dairy Australia is helping get the word out to dairy farmers in regional areas.

Santhanam, now in his second startup venture, also has experience working with corporates and for the ATO. As a founder though, he said he learns a lot about himself. “I am put in situations that I would not have been when I was working in a corporate, where I had a very comfortable lifestyle.”

“Every day is a new challenge and you don’t know exactly where the business is going to next.”

And he’s a great lover of the startup community. “Here, you meet so many heroes, because everyone is a hero in their own space.”

“We have a goal and this gives us the energy to get up and do something.”

Pitching Farm Automation

While Farm Automation is yet to secure investment, Santhanam is powered by the valuable feedback every investor has given him so far.

He said his pitch has gone through “maybe 100 revisions”.

Tomorrow night, he’ll do it again at the Pitch. Guest judges Rachel Yang of Giant Leap, Claire Bristow of Skalata Ventures, Rahul Kesavan of AWS, and Mitch Hancock of BlueRock will pick a major prize winner.

Will Farm Automation rise to the top at the Pitch? Find out for yourself – register to attend here.