On farm automation enhancing horticulture efficiency (webinar)

Video Transcript

Andy Clark, Agriculture Victoria

First of all, I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today. I'd also like to pay my respects to Elders past and present. Today we are going to be hearing from Fieldin, so Harry Goy from Fieldin and he's got with him a grower Marcus Diaco and they'll be chatting through Fieldin what Fieldin is, and Marcus's experience in using the Fieldin technologies. And then after Fieldin we've got Michelle Kerr from Birdbeam. And Michelle's all about managing and looking after the, I guess, the impacts of birds on crops and in lots of other scenarios. But through the use of lasers. So she'll be able to chat a bit more about that.

Harry Goy, Feildin Technologies

Hello everyone. As Andy mentioned, my name is Harry Goy. I've got Marcus, one of our growers with me, and I've got a short and sweet presentation just to go through and maybe we'll go through some of Marcus's Fieldin platform as well. So Fieldin, what is Fieldin? We're a global company. We work in California, all through California, Israel and now in Australia. And we partner with corporate and family farms in the tree crop horticulture space. We've been in Australia for about four years. We're based in Mildura, Shepparton, where I'm based, and up through Brisbane and Tasmania. So, we're Australia wide. What are we? We're basically a farm management system. We dabble in all sorts of efficiencies, productivity, maintenance, flow data, weight cells, all kinds of information of which our modems generate. And basically, we give full visibility to all mechanical things that are going on, on a farm. So how does it all work? We put these modems in all machines, so this can be a tractor is the obvious one, almond shakers if there's any almond growers or nut shakers on the call, harvesters, any sort of machine that's mechanical and that has power, we can hook into and give you visibility on that machine.

Now these modems go into those machines. There's a little key fob here of which the operator can key fob their name. So, at the start of the shift, you've got the recording of the operator. They shoot and collect the operational data up to the cloud and then presented on a platform of which I'll show you in just a sec, but I think where the Fieldin differences is all of the data collection is automated. So we've got these, if you can see this tag here. This Bluetooth low energy tag, so it's got a four to five year battery life, and that speaks via Bluetooth directly to the modem. So on any given day, a grower like Marcus doesn't have to manually type in Tractor 1 is working with slasher 3, for example. The modem or the tractor knows that slasher 3 is working with it because it's speaking to the implement. via Bluetooth, if that makes sense. And we can put smaller modems in trucks and ATVs and smaller units as well, just to have a complete farm management and visibility over all of your operations. Now what I'm going to do, is I'm going to show you, while we've got Marcus here, I'm going to show you Marcus's farm in on Fieldin on the actual platform. So, Marcus works for a company called A Capital and we've been working with Marcus for several years now and this was a day that I pulled last week, and Marcus was doing a little bit of spraying with three different machines. If that's all coming through clearly. Now what Fieldin allows you to do, is you'll have the basic drive lines, of which you can see where these three spray rigs, in this case the activity is spraying, are moving, where they've moved, where the, where they've refilled, and where they started at the end of the day.

You can then play that shift out and physically watch those machines move around, after the fact, and you can also watch this live as well. So, you can have this on live and watch those machines move and they will be moving approximately every 10 seconds as of which the data is transmitting at that cadence.

Now we dive deeper into the flow data of these machines. So, what I've done here is I'm going to isolate an individual tractor on the day. And you can see exactly where the valves have come on and off. So, the left and right valve, as demonstrated by the driveline in purple. And then either side is the left and right valve in the highlighted yellow line. On top of that, in the background, we're collecting wind data, and humidity and temperature, but also some flow data as well. So you can see, when I play this shift out, again, exactly where that machine's going, and then the associated flow data in litres per hectare, of which is also illustrated on the black bar where you can see total litres per hectare, the work efficiency, hours, hectares covered, pace, average speed, the machine and also the implement. The machine is the modem, and the implement is the tag that I just showed you. We can also dive into the efficiencies of these machines and compare operators. So, you can see we break down a shift into spraying, driving, engine off refilling, and this can be different for all these efficiency metrics can be different for different activities. For example, harvesting, and bankouts in almonds and other nut crops would be offloading and working with the harvester. So, we, there's a lot of nuances and different ways we measure and look at different activities as they relate to tree crops. Now I'm just going to load another, a quick aspect of the platform. So, there's a couple of smaller features on the side, daily activities. And that's, let's look at that exact date that we're looking at before. So, I'm going to come here to the 15th, and I'm going to click on those sprayers that we're looking at. And Marcus can now Marcus or and or his supervisors, so his spray supervisors or even the individual operators can see how they performed. Now, please note, we're looking at a single day in isolation. Let's not compare or be too judgmental that the operators, anything could have happened. These 2 operators might have done a shorter shift relative to his peer who's completed eight hectares versus 4. 5 and 4. 0. Different flow rates etc will contribute to the differences in coverage, but over time you'll get a good indication of the pace, and coverage of different operators. And again, this is all live. You can look at the average working speed and set goals based on your parameters and look at a whole lot of other different metrics, efficiencies, shift edge versus in shift work, et cetera. And of course, if Marcus is away for instance, or the farm manager is away or they're spraying on a weekend, for instance, at a glance, you can see exactly what happened in a quick and easy report. Yep. I've got my average litres per hectare was correct. The total flow for the shift. I can look at that too and go. Yep. All my spray rigs are calibrated. The pace, working speed and coverage is correct for the day as well. Same with his weed sprayers. He's only had one going on that particular day, but Marcus can sleep easily knowing that the average spray output was 400 litres, his desired rate, and the total tank went out on that particular day as well. Another cool feature is all of the information can be compiled into one place and give you access to these as well. So, I can now go and see what I want to look at. So, I might put this on the current quarter. Because let's say I've got an accounting or a budget report coming out or a global gap report or something like that's coming out. I can easily put in let's have a look, activity. And you can see everything that's happened in the current quarter. You can see that Marcus has done about 200 hectares of spraying, 100 hectares of weed spraying etc. And he's got his other activities. Let's have a look at what each machine so I can see all of my machines that are doing certain things so I can break down the information like that and or put a block in here as well. So these are all Marcus's blocks and then what sort of spraying happened in these blocks. And then I can open this up and see in this block in the last quarter, block 50, five times I went in there, these are the machines, work speed, coverage, the implement, duration, started on, ended on, and then there's a hell of a lot of other metrics as well that you could throw into here to get more and more information including spray output and et cetera, et cetera. If this was harvesting, we can put scales on machines, get total weight and average weight offloads, all kinds of things. So that's there. If I go back to the actual platform. Today, Marcus, a little bit of mowing is going on by the looks of things. So, if I look at this mower, you can see all the drive lines. And in this case, we've hooked up to the PTO. You can see where the PTO has come on and off as it's crossing headlands, et cetera, and that would show the complete picture of the day and you can use this timeline feature as well to see before, you know, this is all the pre harvest sorry, prestart checks. So, when the key went on all the way to the start of the shift, this is the shift, and then there's a little bit of a breather here, possibly their smoko. So there's, it's very interactive and you can highlight them and look at different features as well that way. Now, the part of the Fieldin difference is not only do we show all of these, every sort of bit of information you can expect from a system that gives you full visibility of your operation in real time. For instance here refill points, average refill time, how many times it's been visited, all of the comparison between different operators, comparing what they're doing throughout the day. But we also, for those almond or tree growers that are sorry, nut growers that are on the call, we also show shaking of every single tree, total trees shakened, average shake time. So, there's a bit of a quality aspect as well. Put in your designated shake range, and if you're out of that range, you know, you're shaking the trees for too long or too short, you've got a very good way to see which tree and where your operator's potentially not shaking to your desired rates. So that's there. Offloads as well at certain points. So, during harvest with fruit bins and things like that, we can show your offloads. In the citrus and apples and stone fruit space, cherries, and then also in the almond or nut harvests where you're offloading it, production sheds or elevator sites, et cetera. And you can see here the exact time your particular type of offloading or chaser bin or bin trailer or lizard has entered that particular polygon of which we draw around a space. And then you've got a good idea of where your produce is coming from and from which blocks. So effectively you've almost got a bit of a yield data traceability aspect as well.

We break down, we've got all of these cool dashboards that allow you to, and they're completely customisable, so this is an example of one, of engine hours. So you've got all of your machines and I've just removed the name of the grower here, but you've got all of the machine aliases. I've filtered over the last 30 days. And now I can hover my mouse. This is interactive. This is a screenshot. And I can see that 65 hours in the last 30 days, this machine has spent harvesting in the lighter blue spraying, and then a little bit of disking as well. So, the course of the end of the year, you'll find that your utilization and no one that we've come across yet has a perfect line of utilized machines. There's always some tail end tractors that when they get to the end of the year, they go, what do we do with these machines? Do we try and actively use them? Utilize them more, try and sell them, do we lease tractors so we're not we're not having all these assets that are depreciating over time. So, we work with the growers to solve some of their pain points as it relates to productivity, efficiency, utilization, maintenance quality, as I mentioned with the tree shaking and flow rates and all of that. You'll get task reports. So, this is actually at Marcus's farm where we've got a block. Marcus has plugged in a spray reco ahead of time. The target of disease, the cultivar which is already in there, and the products that have been applied. So, the, how this works is Marcus will go, I'm going to be spraying between, let's say the dates the 1st to the 10th, and I'm going to be putting out a bit of copper. That then sends that spray record live to the platform. And then whenever a spray rig enters this polygon, an orchard sprayer enters this polygon, in this case two machines have, it then picks up that spray record and records all of that operational data back towards that spray wreck and you can see all of the information we've collected automatically.

So, the only thing that's manual is Mark is putting in a date range and then the products. So, we've got here the two machines, the total hours they spent in that block, the machines, the coverage, you've got the average flow rate that was applied, all of your efficiency data, and of course we're collecting the wind, humidity and temperature information in the background. Do I see a hand up there? Yes. What kind of ways are people using the data that's then captured off the system to help with like their understanding the usage of their machinery and how and where they can improve their kind of efficiencies? So, all of this information's great, right? But data is only as good as you know, if you're not utilizing it, it becomes fairly useless. So, another sort of Fieldin difference is, sure, this is great day to day, but what do you do with it? So, what we do, and I'll show you a couple of examples. This is one of the farms that Marcus is involved with, and this is looking at drive time. So, this is a custom report, which is requested by Marcus and his team to show drive time one way from a block back to a refill point in pink.

So, we can now actively, based on requests, data requests, paint a very clear and easy to understand insight, data insight, and deliver that on demand. So, now Marcus can go, right, well I've got all of these pink refill points. Most of them green in that there's short drive time. So, here's 4, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 way back to this refill point. But down on this block out here, I'm looking at 10, 15, 12 minutes to get back to this refill point. Now at 6 to 12 sprays a year, depending on disease pressures, etc. We can then calculate how much is this costing Marcus and his team in time, just driving and what the opportunity cost is to that. So, then the solution is, do we make an infrastructure change and put in a new refill point? So that's just one example of many of which based on personalized requests, of which are unlimited in the, in our service to our growers, we present these sort of information. So, I hope that, that answers your question. Yeah, perfect. Perfect. I've, we've got two questions. So, the one from Lawrence with spraying and weather data being captured, is the wind direction captured as well as this will be useful from a risk and liability management perspective? This question is linked to the common issue of spray drift and other to other neighbouring crops. So, the short answer is no, we don't capture wind speed sorry, the wind direction. But we capture humidity, temperature and wind speed. And what we can do is as a substitute is link into your online or on farm weather station and we can API directly into about five different companies. So, we don't give you the exact wind direction, but we can link into your on farm, so the farm, the weather station that you are actively using. But I do understand the question of where it comes from and liability. We've got one from Don who has Harry, amazing granularity of data and useful analytics. I have a quick question about the technology adoption. How's your segmentation? What is the major client base? Corporate farms? Family farms? Any geographic dispersion of technology adoption? Like are, is it more tech savvy growers or less tech savvy? I think as a general context, I think most tech savvy growers love data. Our, so that, I believe, if you love data and all things ag tech this sort of platform is, you'll truly love. But I think it goes beyond that. I think everyone is getting smashed by costs at the moment. So anyone who wants to actively reduce costs and understand where their costs are going, be that in different machine types, operators, labour, skills, et cetera this platform allows you to visualize that and put some numbers behind a lot of your assumptions and also discovering things that you haven't, you didn't realize or know about your farm because you truly can't be everywhere at once. And those individuals, I believe, are scattered through, you know, the GMs of very large corporate farms right down to the family farms, which in the current space are corporatizing faster and often the family farms are the best we like to work with the most because they've got more of an appetite to change and they don't have to go through layers and layers of budgets and things like that to make those on farm changes like I just showed you with the refill points. They can go, right, we want a new refill point down there because it's costing us 30 grand a year to drive out to that extra point if they're doing a series of sprays a year. So they're often more reactive and get the most ROI out of the platform.

Michelle Kerr, Bird Beam Laser Bird System

So, my name is Michelle Kerr, and my business is Birdbeam Laser Bird Control. And oddly enough, 2025 is the year of innovation. So it's a new year, and there's only a smarter way to control birds, one step at a time. And working with Bird Control Group, who are the manufacturers, we are elevating bird management with innovative laser technology. Today we're going to be discussing a few of these topic points here, which we'll go through by slides. Bird Control Group are based in the Netherlands and their lasers and companies have been around for over, well over a decade. So, we're well in front of the ag tech boom that's happened in the last few years and it's been quite a critical point in agriculture and also quite a steep learning curve for many but being well into it, we know how the technology works and we're not new to this. We've been their partners for around seven years and we've got an excellent relationship. So, moving towards, you know, lots of research and collaborations. We've done plenty of proof of concept in the early years and we've got a lot of deployment under our belt. Everyone would want to know how this laser works and it is a big question. So, bird damage in Australian horticultural production is estimated at well over $300 million. It's a big number. Without appropriate measures, you can see crop losses in excess of 50%. And as an example of that in the, let's say in the Hunter Valley last year for their vintage, they lost 60% of their total crop to birds. It was a huge loss last year and the thing about birds is they remember where the crop is and the food source is and they just keep coming back and they bring their friends. Bird Control Group have the Australian patent for laser modules for bird control in Australia. So, as you can see on your screen, this is the patented model. It is fit for purpose and if you see sort of other laser devices out there, well, they're working outside the IP and we feel that's a really important point because we've got a lot to offer and there's been a lot of work and time put into this feature. We've got highly integrated features for AVIX, which is the device here. It's the AVIX Autonomic. It's extremely user friendly, so we don't like to overcomplicate it. You've got other things to do on farm rather than working through, you know, complicated tech. It's got a nice big fat beam and it's not a single, so it's not like a laser pointer. So, it's got a big fat beam which offers a high safety high safety for the device. It has 150 waypoints which are programmable per 16 programs. So, it's got a lot of user integration within each program. It's a modular design. Its quality manufactured in the Netherlands. They are fastidious on the end product. It's got to be quality. And there's been a lot of different research put in behind it. Our equipment comes with safety features. Safety's big on farm, like it's massive everywhere. It's all about safety. This has got a key lock system. You've got to do a certified laser course so that everyone is across the, you know, whatever risks may present like any other ag gear on farm. So it's a free online course and we demand pretty much that the Safety course is done before we before we turn up on site. It's got Bluetooth programming, its password protected and there's no subscriptions. We want everyone to use the equipment to the best of its ability, to be as efficient as possible, so we don't demand any software subscriptions, and the software is updated perhaps once a year. So, the output of this is a green beam. And it's seen by birds to be a solid object. And birds have excellent eyesight. And they see green as the most intense colour. The laser works on a very high wavelength, which the birds can see only, but our human eyes just don't pick up the wavelength. So, we just see like a green dot on the ground, but the birds see the whole spectrum of the beam like a big, large stick. So, it moves towards the birds and they view it as a predator. The birds perceive this area is dangerous for them and they move on to other areas to forage. So continually taught that the area is risky, whilst the laser is humane and ethical, it doesn't harm the birds in any way. So, we're continually teaching the birds that the area is not for them and they will push off somewhere else to find a food source. It's vital to success that the Avex is up and running well before the season. So, you want to make sure that you've got that in place before you've got bird pressure, before the crop is attractive. And this gives the birds a much better opportunity to learn to and go elsewhere to forage. Sorry guys, bit of a roll through. And so that is a critical, critical point. I've, at the moment, I get a lot of calls, birds are in my crop, I'm losing my crop, I've got birds out, and it's almost like putting lollies in front of a child and going, don't eat them. You need to be proactive and get your laser equipment up early in the season. This is a little graph about the positioning and about height. So, we create many different patterns over the crop and this way the birds don't get accustomed to it. So, we've got 150 waypoints per program and the waypoints have literally referenced points of the block or the crop in question. So, the laser will stay within that crop area, it won't go outside onto the road, shoot across onto neighbour's properties, and definitely not you know, light your neighbour's property up like a disco ball. So we are very particular on setting the parameters of the area in question, which we call the laser control area. Height is key. So, birds are continually looking up to look for predators. So, the laser's got to come from height. Looks down into the canopy or the top of the crop and this maintains also control about exactly where it will direct and point. The laser is best positioned at two to three metres in height for ground crops, and if you've got anything above two meters, two, three meters, like let's say a vineyard the laser needs to be at least five to six meters in height. This is grounded determined in case there's some undulations and we often do nine-meter poles in vineyards just to make sure that we get maximum reach and effective coverage. Effective, efficiency and coverage.

This covers up to six hectares, so AVIX will cover up to six hectares and this is dependent on bird pressure. There is no other equipment that will effectively cover a large area, like none. So, we want to make sure that we understand the bird pressure that the growers are under. Programs are specifically created for that block, crop or rooftop using the waypoints, as mentioned. And it is manufactured for Australian conditions. So, it's a high output, rain or shine. We've got these in the Middle East with temperatures over 50 degrees. We've got them on offshore rigs with high volumes of, you know, of sea spray and that sort of stuff. So, they are quite fit for Australian conditions.

Best practice is to apply the pressure back more intensely than what you're actually getting. And I ask the question, what sort of pressure are birds giving you? What is the cost of your losses? And it's quite surprising because a lot of people will see they're seabirds, but they don't actually realise the cost in which, what they're losing. So, that's a really important question that I'd really like to start with. Most pressure obviously comes in the early morning and late afternoon. It's a fully autonomous unit, so it'll be up before you put your socks on in the morning, and it'll be still on after you're home and hopefully having a beer on the couch. But the most important thing is it's on in those two very critical time sets and it'll work right through the day as required.

Energy and maintenance. So, one of the most common methods for large areas in, and seasonal rotation of crops is a trailer mounted system. You get much more bang for your buck if you. Excuse the pun. This one is a trailer mounted system for Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture. We don't supply the trailers. It's just normally the farms are pretty smart. They've got equipment around. The solar kit gets mounted on that. And this one that you can see is on a collapsible mask, so it can go up as required. And that's a quite a nice example of a trailer mounted system. Full solar kits are always available and if we don't if we don't need that we'll just pop it on local infrastructure like a building shed or so forth and connect it to 240 grid power and it's plug and play. Very little maintenance is required. It's simply if you get a bit of dust you might want to wipe over the lens. And keep the lens dust free, you check cables as you would any other gear and make sure your batteries are charged season on season and you're pretty much ready to go.

Laser Bird return on investment. Okay, so it's a, we do get a massive reduction in birds and it's quite impressive and this is just feedback from clients. So, we get over 70 percent which is great. Which is a great thing. So again, if you know your numbers, you can actually quantify the use and the investment in any agriculture technology. So, it's really important that you understand that the cost the birds are giving you. On ducks and waterfowl, we often see those in ground crops as the number one bird issue and we'll pretty much get 99%. So you have ducks, you have a laser, you run it at night, they forage through the night and mow everything down, so you get up and your crop's gone, put a laser on, the ducks won't be there. This product is recognised by BirdLife Australia and the World Wildlife Fund. So it's ethical and it's sustainable. It does not harm the birds. We're doing a project with BirdLife Australia in WA at the moment. We're two years in. We're protecting the black cockatoos which are highly protective species. And also, you know, we're saving the growers stress from having them land in their orchards and it's all reports are it's going really well. A big question is, does it work on all birds? Well, the answer is no, it doesn't. So, the birds of prey are pretty much the predators of the world in the bird life situation and they are at the top of the apex. So they are, they're actually really great to have on site. If you see birds of prey, there are, you know, kites and osprey or your eagles and so forth. It doesn't matter for them. They've got a different ocular setup. and they won't worry about a laser. So, they're a good guy to have around. King parrots have been tricky and we're really honest. So, I want to know what sort of birds you've got, you know, take a little bit of notice about what sort of species they are and we can be more helpful with exactly what level of deterrence we need to put on site as well. We've got lasers in corn and brassica, seed crops, soybeans, ground crops, orchards, vineyards, nut farms. commercial properties, tram depots, dairy farms. So typically we see a really wide application for AVIX and in a sort of a zero, a no kill world that agriculture is in at the moment it's a really important piece to have a look at.

Alright, a couple of case studies for you and I'll show followed up with a little video from a horticulture grower of ours. So, Peace Brothers Orchards are down in Victoria with a hundred thousand dollars worth of yearly bird damage. They've got a pretty good cross species on site from crows to blackbird and lorikeets. And you can see on that photo there that there's they've got over the top netting. So typically, birds will sit on a, perch on a surface or a tree, and then they watch and then they'll fly in. Birds will come from a water source, a tree line. Sometimes you don't have to cover the whole entire area. Some people have 700 hectares. So you're going to actually concentrate the laser on the area that you get the most bird pressure from. These guys have two waternomics and they've had them for a few years now. They've realised a 90 percent bird reduction on site, saving them $90,000 in bird damage, the investment was $40,000 at that time and they saved $50,000 in one year.

Give you another example of a really high lucrative crop, which is the lychees. and birds are pretty, pretty good on lychees. So, this is a really good project to do. So $60,000 worth of bird damage in a year. Lorikeets and Rosella's, coloured birds are quite tenacious and they come in great numbers. So again, know your species because we do have to, you know, put as much pressure as you're getting, if not more, back to the birds. So, they have 90 percent reduction in bird damage, which is about $54,000 in one year, saved on bird damage, less their investment. And they saved 14, 000 in one year, and then $54,000 in year two, so typically we'll see a return on investment between one and two years. So, we're pretty happy with that.

Adaptability and integration. So, let's talk about a toolbox approach. So, the best control methods and the best results come from a toolbox approach. You throw one thing in isolation, it's something you're just going to go, oh yeah, we're just going to chuck that in and see what happens. You really got to be active, proactive, and that's a combination. So, gas guns are you either get a, you either get a grower that loves them or hates them, and it's because they, if they hate them, it's because they don't move them. You've got to move your gas guns, you have to move them every four days. So, it's about constantly rotating your toolbox of deterrents. You know, you've got to put a bit of time and effort into it. Shooting to scare, and in some cases, nets are also an example of management. And again, the bird pressure must be applied back equal or more pressure. So, you don't want to put your, you know, spread your butter too thin on the toast. You want to make sure that you've got a good coverage and it's going to be effective for you. Integration with pole mounting, you can see on this screen, that's a vineyard, that's a nine-metre pole, because we had to sort of get over a couple of elevations there. You can trailer mount it. You can put it on buildings, extended masts and all sorts of things. So, it really depends site by site what your needs are for, for the infrastructure setup. Those guys there, that's a vineyard in Tasmania. They've got nine, nine lasers over 27 hectares. They've had them for years. They couldn't get nets during COVID and then they went, let's go with this and they have never looked back. So, they've saved on multiple machinery, passes across the vineyard, heavy equipment, labour, sprays. and spray applications, disease and those microclimates that are involved with having nets on. They're really happy year on year out.

A couple of different platforms that Bird Control Group have in place for you, which is AVIX Connect, that's your programming app, and it's really simple to use. There's lots of prompts. It's super simple. The hardest thing is people don't remember their passwords, as I think we all do, so that's just one thing for the, for memory, and AVIX Academy, so that's the e learning platform, so that's where you get your free online courses, and then you can share them across your farm to make sure the relevant people have got information and everyone can view the laser as it is and not, you know, and be across it as one. So that's a really good platform to have.

We do have one quick question which was about other wildlife other than birds such as rabbits, kangaroos, deer and then I was going to add to that list bats as I have heard of. I know about lasers for bats, but I hear about bats as being an issue quite a bit. Yeah bats are problematic, but bats see in a really different you know, they, it does, it's not that effective on bats. It may be 2%. I mean, if you've got a massive banana farm, you want to save 2%, it might be worthwhile. But I can't really say for, with any conviction that it's that it's effective on bats. They use ultrasonic. Their eyes aren't great and it's a little bit of a difficult part that. Other pests. I've got growers that are adamant about how they've got a block of lasers on it and they're controlling it and they've got nothing in it. Not birds, no wallabies no possums, no critters digging holes and so forth. Again, it is a bird deterrent, so, case by case I do have some growers who are really happy with it. We do run a few properties with lasers through the night for deer as well. But essentially it's a bird deterrent. Happy side effect. Yeah, that's right. It's a good side effect if you get a few critters leaving the property and going back to where they belong.

Created by Dutch firm Bird Control Group, the Avex Autonomic Mk2 is fit for purpose. Humane. Cost efficient, sustainable, and neighbour friendly solution to bird problems. Used in over 100 countries, it keeps your area safe 24/7 and reduces bird pressure between 70 to 99%. I'm Andrew Craigie, we grow seed crops like behind us this canola seed, could be cabbage seed, rocket seed, a lot of brassica seeds, as well as poppies, pyrethrum, potatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli.

Where we're looking now, 12 months ago, I had a cabbage seed crop and totally lost the whole crop to birds. As you can see this season, the crop is a canola seed crop. So it's the first hybrid cross ready to grow seed. So it's a fairly important crop and with the laser, it's taken all the bird pressure off. You'll still hear plenty of birds, lots of bush around. The birds are still here, but they're not in my crop. The Autonomic emits a green beam of light that birds recognise as a permanent object, which in turn teaches the birds to stay away from the perceived danger without causing any physical harm. The laser, it's just a game changer. It's silent, it's humane, it works 24 7 without fail. It's just one of those things that you cannot control any other way. And the laser seems to have done an absolutely brilliant job here this year. The day we planted this crop, there was 25 skylarks came straight in to the crop. Once we got the laser up, there's not one bird, but you can still hear all the birds around, but they're not on my crop. So I'm a very happy grower. Maybe last season we lost 10 to 15 percent in a different block to birds. This is a particularly high pressure block and it's virtually a zero loss this year. Look, the name of the game is it's not going to get rid of every bird on the property, but what it is going to do is totally control them on the selected crops and wherever you can do that, you've got a chance of making some money, Used in commercial and industrial applications, solar farms, aquaculture, food processing factories, targeting compliance and hygiene issues in airports, feet, lots and more.

Bird Beam have been absolutely brilliant in getting this set up and eventually proving to me that it works.

Costs and support. So AVIX will start around $21,000. Yes, not cheap, but it does the job. It's fit for purpose. It's high quality and we stand behind it. Solar kits installation costs are extra on top of that. Installation includes programming and installation of the unit on the infrastructure programming and training on site. So that's via us or our install team which are based in Melbourne, and we travel Australia wide, and we're constantly on the go. So, it's got a 24 month warranty on parts and equipment. The device is modular. If you ever have any issues, you know, you can upload those device logs straight to the cloud. You pull them down, run the errors if there's any, and then look at the replacement part that needs to be sent, and it's literally a swap out. Really easy to do. There's plenty of sales support, after sales support in Australia. We've got full time sales, there's us, there's a tech team in Melbourne, and our installation team. So, there's a lot of support wherever you go. And that's it from me. So, thanks so much. I really appreciate you tuning in today during your lunch. Check out our website, get on board, have a little look at all our case studies and for more information. Give me a buzz, we'll have a chat through it, send me an email and we can start planning, future planning your bird control for your next crop.

So if you wanted to move it around, is it, once the, you recommend installing it on the pole and in the trailer, but if you were to have it set up in a block, then that block, you change the cropping or whatever you're doing in there and you did want to move it somewhere else. Is that quite a hassle or is it, is it an easy thing to relocate throughout? Yeah. You just tow your trailer to another spot. You would actually aim it or point it towards the area that gives you the most, it's going to give you the most bird pressure, and then it's just a matter of programming the some way points across that area. And once you get a, you know, once you get a gist for it, it's usually pretty simple. During COVID, all our installations were done remotely, and I had all sorts of farmers going, Oh, I don't think I can use this equipment, Michelle, that I don't know how to turn my phone on. And the next day they were right across it. So we've never had any issues. We've got a lot of learning modules, suites of tutorials and there's lots of support to help growers when they need it to, you know, to do refreshes. Yeah, excellent.