Harvest Electronics

Harvest Electronics started in a garage in 1990 making devices for monitoring Coca Cola vending machines. That business was sold in 2000 and the company started over, firstly developing frost alarms for orchardists. Today it has its own manufacturing and assembly plant and produces its own circuit boards to control a number of failsafe/alarm/alert electronic monitors especially for orchard and farm use. These include an effluent irrigator monitor, soil moisture sensor and vat monitor. Comprehensive weather stations are also available and a cowshed “dashboard” that allows milkers to keep an eye on effluent disposal, the vat, hot water temperature, weather etc, is under development.

Peter Munn is an electrical engineer who left Telecom in 1990 to develop remote monitors to assist in the restocking of Coke vending machines. By the time he sold that business in 2000 the company was monitoring 60,000 machines in NZ, Australia and the USA.

In the early 2000s the company developed weather stations with frost monitors and alarms for orchardists. Today most large orchards and vineyards use these products. Typically in October more than 17,000 frost alert messages are sent out.

In looking around for other opportunities, Peter realised that dairy farms were becoming larger and more mechanised and that there was a “bucketload” of problems that could be solved by remote monitoring and alarm systems.

“A major interest recently has been for farmers to use weather stations to measure evapotranspiration and complement that with soil moisture probes. Those readings help them with effluent disposal and also irrigation, so that they can make better use of water,” says Peter.

“We also monitor effluent ponds and we have a fail safe system that we put on their travelling irrigator, which plots with GPS where the irrigator has been and provides proof of placement. It means that the boss can make sure the staff are putting effluent in the right place. But even more importantly, it monitors the wheel speed and the pressure out at the effluent irrigator with radio telemetry and if they drop out of specification, a signal goes back and shuts down the pump so that the irrigator can’t stall in the paddock and create a lake of effluent, contaminate ground water and waterways etc.”

The effluent failsafe is a big seller at present in parts of the South Island where local authorities may require their use. However Peter says that at this year’s National Fieldays, many Waikato farmers were sussing out the system because they expect to need one within the next few years.

Another development that has seen substantial growth in the past year has been the company’s milk vat monitor that alerts staff to problems.

“We hear anecdotally that most farms lose a vat of milk each season, which could have a value of around $8000. Someone might leave the outlet tap open and milk spills out, or they leave the entry tap open when they are washing the milking equipment and detergent goes into the vat. Sometimes the stirrer fails or the circuit breaker trips out and milk temperature goes up on a summer’s night instead of going down,” says Peter. “Maybe they forget to turn on the water going through the plate cooler so there is no cooling of milk and then the refrigeration plant in the vat can’t get the temperature down fast enough. Or perhaps the thermostat trips out on their hot water so they end up washing with cold water. So there are all sorts of things that can go wrong in the cowshed but they are easy to monitor.”

The company’s newest device is a soil moisture monitor that allows farmers to check soil moisture and soil temperature. Combined with the effluent irrigator monitor, it means that farmers and local authorities can be confident that they are applying effluent at the right rates so that it is an effective fertiliser without runoff or contamination of ground water.

The time has gone, says Peter, when farmers could spread effluent on a back paddock where it was out of sight and mind. And while disposing of effluent safely can be a pain, it is far better for the soil, the stock and the environment in general and will ensure that the farm system and its profitability are sustainable in the long term.

“Around here dairyfarmers are not particularly liked because they are doing well and yet they are perceived as polluting the rivers. But they are a major source of the country’s wealth so we have to work together. It isn’t an either/or situation, it is a matter of helping them to do the job better,” he says.

“We prefer customers who come to us because they want to do something rather than because they have been ordered to do so by the local authority. The farmers who want to buy things for their farm and will come back next year and buy more and say ‘I don’t know how I managed without this – I am saving electricity and fertiliser and I’m getting better grass growth than I ever got before’.”

Peter believes that while a fairly small proportion of farmers get excited about technology at present, that number is growing, particularly amongst the younger generation who are going through training institutes and universities. They know how to use technology and want to use it and so they are bringing about change.

One piece of Harvest Electronics’ technology that will interest dairy farmers is a “milking dashboard” for which a prototype is currently undergoing testing. It comprises a 32” TV monitor in a waterproof case placed in the cowshed so that milkers can look up and see a picture of the milk vat, see if the stirrer is operating, check the hot water temperature, see if the effluent irrigator is running and see the level of effluent in the sump near the cowshed. It is designed to generate alarms in real time if any device being monitored goes out of specification.

While the early adopters are the main buyers of Harvest Electronics’ technologies at present, Peter Munn believes that business pressures are such that their use will become mainstream before long.

“Dairy farms used to be 300 or 400 cows. Now they are way more intensive and we have plenty of farms using our system with herds of 2000 or more. There is no longer a sharemilker and the owner of the farm is often not even on the property,” says Peter. “There is the potential for serious mistakes to happen particularly if the day-to-day management of this multimillion dollar business is in the hands of a youngster who is out late Saturday night and is a bit hung over Sunday morning. However, with our technology, the owner can see what is happening on the farm in real time and take action if necessary.”

More information can be found at http://harvest.com/