In theory, grazing your livestock should be the simplest part of your farming operation. Step 1: Put a fence around an area. Step 2: Put animals inside that fence. Step 3: Animals eat their sustenance inside the fenced-in area.

Of course, we all know that proper grazing management involves much more than that. And with many of us never far from a smartphone, why wouldn’t we use it as a tool to help us implement our grazing plans?

“Looking under the hood” of a few different grazing management platforms at the most recent CattleCon were representatives from a select few apps: James Rogers of Northway Ranch Services; John Fargher of AgriWebb; and Billy Cook, Ph.D., of Enriched Ag.

Rogers noted that technology plays a big role in the economic and social context of a ranch.

“We need to be lifelong students,” he said. “Ten percent of ag producers are ‘overachievers,’ at the front end of this; 20% are inspired; but 70% are at home just grinding it out – that’s who we’re gravitating to.”

His app, Northway Ranch Services, allows users to view their land assets with a balance sheet, and to understand what’s going on with their water resources and the value they add.

Fargher’s AgriWebb is now 10 years old. He said it helps farmers digitize their business, replacing the notebook in their pocket and doing everything chuteside. More than 70,000 farmers use their software every day.

Cook of Enriched Ag found there are many hurdles in getting technology adopted in this industry. His leading concern: “Would your granddad use it?” They want to provide the least time behind a computer and the least interruption to business as usual. Enriched Ag captures visual data at the ag scale and provides analytics driven by AI and a network of ag experts.

“Agriculture is one of the last industries to adopt technology and beef is the last of that group,” Fargher said, adding that age is not a deterrent in using technology – just someone’s mentality.

He also said it was “surprising” to see how many farmers don’t know their balances, or even how many animals they have. These apps, he explained, aren’t just gathering “data for the sake of data” – farmers need to be able to glean insights from them.

“If you’re not measuring it, you can’t manage it,” Fargher said.

The biggest challenge, of course, is always time and money, Cook noted. “And what works with this generation won’t work for the next. Technology is providing that next opportunity – and farmers are capitalizing on it.”

Fargher added that early adopters are needed to begin this industry change. Everyone involved in agriculture needs to be successfully engaged in these ever-changing markets.

The key, according to Fargher, is integration and collaboration, because you can’t do everything yourself. “Farmers don’t want 10 tools in 10 apps,” he said. “In the U.S., [AgriWebb] works with AgSpire and NatGLC [the National Grazing Land Coalition].

Evolution of technology helps too. While satellite imagery is getting better daily, every operation has different needs. Users must have ground-level data too, Cook said, and then they can make inferences by cross-referencing what is being measured and observed.

“Creating a grazing management plan is not just a box to check – we’re helping to present information that makes decisions easier to make,” Cook added.

A solid selling point is that with many of these apps, farmers own all of their data, which helps them keep their information safe.

An ongoing challenge, however, is that a lot of the places where users want to collect data have no service. “Connectivity will continue to be an issue,” Cook admitted. “That is the weak link right now. But a lot of it works offline and then uploads and syncs when a good connection exists.”

And the last thing a farmer needs is more finicky equipment to deal with. How much “stuff” is involved with these apps depends on what an operation requires.

“We just need to meet producers where they are,” Rogers said. “We start with a ‘hub’ and then we can add spokes.”

To learn about the apps discussed in this session, visit northwayranchservices.com, agriwebb.com/us and enriched.ag.