OBARO has announced Farmers Friend Enterprise as the company’s official farm management platform.
In its first phase, this partnership will give OBARO employees and select OBARO farmers access to the Farmers Friend product suite. The cloud-based mobile and web application offers a first-of-its-kind digital management solution for farmers enabling them to manage, securely store, track, and seamlessly share information.
Farmers Friend Enterprise is an agricultural tool that minimises costs, mitigates risk, and assists farmers to have full insight into their day-to-day operations as a means to offer them the best possible opportunity of maximised success for their harvests and yield.
The result is an agricultural environment with reduced communication friction which aims to expedite access to finance, and critical products and services. IQ Logistica will provide support to OBARO during the registration and recording process to facilitate the transition into a digital environment offered by Farmers Friend.
The integration of the data that users input, manage, and update on the Farmers Friend Enterprise solution, provides OBARO with a seamless access point to all relevant information in one dashboard where they can analyse, react, mitigate, or support in real time.
Nic Bronkhorst, the company CEO, said: “OBARO is excited about the partnership with Farmers Friend. Data analysis and digital transformation of agricultural management practices are essential in farming activities for future profitability. Farmers Friend Enterprise offers an all-encompassing dashboard to manage numerous variables that influence agricultural production and yield.”
He added, “To be #AlignedWithTheFarmer’s business operations on every farm, OBARO has taken a huge leap together with Farmers Friend Enterprise by digitising a considerable number of mundane management practices to allow producers to focus on more strategic areas of their business. The application also allows farmers to manage and mitigate risk with more ease, all with an easy-to-use digital interface. The application will evolve, and continuous development will ensure that eventually, farmers will be able to do more precise, predictive procurement of inputs, and allow them better planning and more efficient use of resources.
Jandre van der Westhuizen, CEO of IQ Logistica, said: “IQ Logistica is delighted to partner with OBARO with our Farmers Friend solution. The importance of accumulating critical data from a farm’s operation and being able to interpret it thereafter is essential in 2024 within the South African agricultural context, and nurturing our country’s ability to thrive in the global agriculture sector.
“The uptake of this type of sophisticated software by industry leaders, such as OBARO, will set the precedent for farmers across the board and demonstrate the exceptional, and arguably critical, benefit of having access to historical data as a tool for mitigating the farmer’s risk and positively impacting future outcomes for any crop or harvest.”
The benefits of this new partnership include:
● Sharing of GIS farm and field locations with weather-related environmental insights as well as farming performance data in real-time.
● Secured upload and storage of digital customer information.
● Critical assistance to OBARO and their farmers in onboarding their farmers to the Farmers Friend application, to optimise farming, harvest, and overall business operations.
● Technical support to OBARO marketers and sales force to extend support to the farmer while ensuring key comprehension of key Farmers Friend features, and amplifying the app benefits to all parties, allowing essential insight into the industry.
● This is a joint opportunity for both OBARO and IQ Logistica, to align with and support the farmer in the South African agriculture context, to meet the farmers’ needs and overcome their challenges, while working towards achieving OBARO’s and IQ Logistica’s company vision.
The Star