App helps Aussie farmers improve standards

A newly-launched app for beef farmers has been developed to help the meat and livestock industry set up a forage budget and improve best practices among producers.

The app, free to download from the Apple app store or Google Play, helps record stock numbers across paddocks, rainfall measurements and check the condition of grazing land. It could help producers in Northern Australia plan for the dry season and manage their budgets better, says the app’s developer FutureBeef.

The Stocktake Plus app has been funded by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. It sells itself as the “new best mate” of graziers in the paddock and has been developed specifically for Northern producers, although the app has functionality for users from other parts of Australia too.

Plan for wet season

Adjusting stocking rates to meet a host of demands, such as feed supply, animal requirements and ground cover target, is considered best farming practice in a grazing business, according to the MLA. The app apparently helps accomplish these goals.

The app allows the user to determine the appropriate balance of stock to the available pasture,” said Dr Matthew McDonagh, MLA’s general manager for on-farm innovation and adoption. “Producers can set up their own properties and paddocks and the app will then produce reports, based on pasture estimates, including long-term carrying capacity and land condition benchmarks.

It will help plan for wet-season paddock spelling to improve land condition and take better care of your pastures.

The app has three key functions that could potentially make it useful to the agri-businesses: it can monitor data to record and analyse rainfall and land conditions; it can calculate short-term stock rates and pasture yield; and it can run detailed data reports to build a bigger picture on stock, land and grazing management.

The app is based on an earlier version developed by the Queensland Government which wasn’t compatible with mobile devices.