The irrigation technology of US company FarmHQ can save farmers money on labour, water, fuel, electricity, and prevent crop damage. “But if you’re talking to growers, they will often also mention peace of mind, stress reduction”, CEO and co-founder David Wallace emphasises.
The irrigation technology of US company FarmHQ can save farmers money on labour, water, fuel, electricity, and prevent crop damage. “But if you’re talking to growers, they will often also mention peace of mind, stress reduction”, CEO and co-founder David Wallace emphasises. Wifi Watering System
David and his brother and co-founder Connor Wallace have created a system that controls the water flow and shares irrigation data in real time to a cell phone dashboard. Growers can get all their irrigation equipment online and in sync to save time, cut stress, and lower costs. “I sometimes call it the internet of irrigation”, David says. “That’s really what we are building.”
Growers are able to see and operate several features in real time in the dashboard. They can keep tabs on their irrigation from anywhere with constant updates on location, speed, pressure, and flow rate, as well as advanced metrics like estimated completion time and application rate. And they can control their irrigation equipment remotely at the press of a button.
The technology of FarmHQ, previously known as CODA Farm Technologies, works on farms of different sizes, and for numerous crops. “We are focused on larger farms, where connectivity is a problem, and where they’re spread out, so monitoring and control is a big challenge for them”, David says. “And we are also focused on their climate and area.”
“Our smallest farm is about 150 acres, and we’ve got farms that are pushing 10,000 acres. But we do not do work for vineyards or any farm that has a permanently installed drip irrigation solution.”
The FarmHQ system works on cellular technology, but the devices also have a GPS chip. The company has partnered with a platform that allows it to operate in more than 100 countries. “We have devices operating in Mexico in pretty remote locations, where you can’t send a message on your phone. But our devices operate there pretty well. They have a powerful connection and don’t need to send a lot of data”
“We report on the pressure and the flow-rate, but we also collect all sort of other information with our device”, David says. “We can tell what the temperature is, or whether the engine is running or not, for example. Customers will see if anything changes within 2 to 10 seconds.”
In general, FarmHQ works with irrigation systems in annual field crops. The technology is particularly effective for crops that are irrigated with mobile equipment, like hose reels, linear movers or center pivots. The system provides real-time information on how fast a sprinkler is moving through the field.
They don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to go and check on it
The FarmHQ system has timers and schedules built-in, and growers can create an efficient watering plan. “This part of the system currently focuses on pump control. We are not doing multiple block scheduling for drip irrigation. But it is easy to set a shutdown timer, a one-time schedule or a repeating schedule. We are a fantastic solution for pump control across the board. But we are also getting a bit more into valve control.”
FarmHQ can save farmers money on labour, crop damage prevention, water and fuel and electricity. “But if you’re talking to a growers, they will often also mention peace of mind, stress reduction”, David emphasises. “They’re not worrying if their irrigation is working. They don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to go and check on it.”
Cost reduction is important for farmers, David emphasises. “Monitoring an irrigation system for a large farming operation costs a lot of money. It is kind of a hidden cost. You don’t think about. So, if you’re able to eliminate all that drive time, the labour, the fuel and wear and tear on your trucks, it adds up to many times more than the cost of the system. There are water savings, and crop damage prevention is also huge for high value crops, on the scale of $10,000 plus per system per season.”
“A lot of growers in our area don’t have to pay for their water. They have pretty abundant water sources. But where growers do have to pay for their water, or water is scarce, saving on water is a huge advantage. So, it is really important to understand what the challenges for specific growers are in their area. We’ve invested quite a bit of time into developing investment calculations that are tailored to each individual grower.”
According to FarmHQ, its devices helped save approximately 365 million gallons of water on farms last year, over roughly 40,000 acres. Year-over-year, the number of farm accounts has tripled. Revenue is up fourfold. The number of agricultural irrigation dealers selling FarmHQ products and services is up fourfold. And 95% of customers are renewing their contracts. “This year, we have well over 100,000 acres under management. I expect that figure is going to scale pretty much linearly as we expand”, David says.
The company is currently active in the US, Canada, Mexico and deployed its first pilot in Australia. “And Italy, Spain and Greece are on the top of our list. We are very well suited to the type of irrigation that they do there. But honestly, there is a demand for the product everywhere, but what we can do as a company is disconnected from that demand right now.”
In the US, the basic system of FarmHQ costs US $1,449 (MSRP). The annual fee ranges from US $220 to US $360 per year. Farmers can install the system themselves. “It really doesn’t require any tools to do the installation”, David points out. “It can be very simple. Installation on electric pumps or center pivots is a little bit more involved.”
The question remains how FarmHQ’s technology will develop further. “Right now, we stay focused on equipment monitoring, and do one thing really well”, David says. “You will see our equipment control capabilities continue to expand. We are working on much more comprehensive control over equipment. And you will also see more data integration in a very simple intuitive way. Making it easier for farmers to make decisions, and put them into practice.”
FarmHQ CEO David Wallace grew up on a potato farm in Washington’s Skagit Valley, that has been in his family since the late 1800s. “By the time my generation came around, irrigation was a regular practice”, he says.
“Growing up, I did pretty much every aspect of farming, eventually working full time on the farm after college. I had a technical career for the better part of a decade, but ultimately decided that I wanted to come back to agriculture.”
David joined his family’s farm full time in the late summer of 2018. “Pretty soon, we realised we had this frustrating challenge with our irrigation systems. We were constantly driving around and taking a look at what they were doing. They’re mobile systems and tend to be somewhat prone to failure. That can be quite damaging to the crops. We spent a lot of effort making sure that they were operating correctly.”
The initial idea for the agtech company came from David’s father. “He asked if we could find a solution on the market, where we could remotely monitor and control our irrigation systems, and also be able to shut down the pump automatically if any problems occurred. I spoke with different dealers and they weren’t aware of anything. We decided it would be a fun project to build on our own.”
Initially the family build ten simple devices that would tell if something was moving or if it had stopped. If the hose reel did stop, the system would automatically shut down the irrigation pump. “Just that little feature alone completely transformed how we managed irrigation, as we no longer had to drive around and look at things. And we could trust the crop would be safe in the middle of the night.”
“The following year we had five or six neighbouring farms that were interested as well, and that’s when it started to blossom into a broader endeavour. We still have a very close relationship with our farm. It’s our primary testbed for developing new technology and new features.””
“Broadly speaking, I think decision making – when farmers irrigate, with what frequency and how much – remains kind of a pseudo-science, like a family secret that gets past down. There are a lot of solutions on the market that give you information, like weather stations, soil moisture monitors or climate models. But on the farms that we see, they are still not broadly used. I think there is a big challenge in this space to make sense of all the data that is available, and make it useful. That is something that we are interested in long term.”
The more pressing issue for farmers that FarmHQ deals with, is the day-to-day grind of managing irrigation systems, David says. “How do you coordinate your labour, and make sure it is in the place you need it at the time you need it? How do you make sure that your equipment is functioning correctly, when you’re not there to watch it? How do you make sure your plans are executed by your crew? Those are the problems we solve really well.”
“We give farmers that top-down visibility of what is happening with their operation. We give them the automation that is necessary to cut down on errors, and timing issues. And then we give them the historical recording , so they know what is happening and can account for it.”
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