The Optiweigh team is on the road all the time but I was lucky to be able to travel through the US and Canada last week, racking up some serious KMs – approx 7500km (or 4600+ miles) – criss-crossing beef country.
I was over there checking up on some of our units and getting some new ones up and running and had the chance to have a good look around (as we all like to do when we get the chance to look at something different).
Here’s a few things from the trip that stood out to me:
It’s a bloody big continent! We have Optiweigh units in four states in the US as well as Alberta Canada. Getting around a few of these in week requires seeing a lot of country!
Ranching is in the blood. Once you get out of the big cities the culture is distinctly all about farming and ranching – more so it seemed to me than it is in many parts of Australia. Whether it be at a restaurant or gas station it is very easy to strike up a conversation about cows. Even the local radio on a Saturday afternoon had a session talking about nutrition supplements for livestock.
We all have challenging environments. In the north of the US and in Canada the main challenge is the cold (imagine having to bury poly pipe 5 feet underground to stop freezing!). But the common challenge is getting enough of the right quality nutrition into the livestock. Supplements and licks are a big part of raising and growing cattle and a device that can measure their effectiveness through weight monitoring certainly draws a bit of interest.
No one is adopting technology for the sake of it. The technology adoption curve is pretty similar on both sides of the pacific. Just like in Australia, ranchers in the US and Canada are prepared to adopt technology – but only if it has a really clear benefit that is big enough to offset the hassle of having another thing to check and another app to log in to. People who work with livestock do it because they love the job and the animals – but the financial imperatives are still there and there is general acceptance that technology is going to be an important part of being profitable in the future.
Worth noting that US politics didn’t pop up in conversation during the visit nearly as much as US politics does in Australia.
