A Dorset blueberry farmer is planning the global scale-up of his tech venture after raising £235,000 in funding through the Government’s innovation agency.
David Trehane’s cloud computing platform Cropdesk helps farmers to track the progress of crop performance and farm labour use in real time, to allow them to make cost-effective decisions on future cropping and production.
The company has also launched a recruitment app for fruit pickers, called Seasonal Jobs, to help address labour shortages following the 海角视频’s exit from the European Union which have been accelerated by the global pandemic.
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Mr Trehane secured funding for his latest tech project after partnering with Innovate 海角视频 EDGE to create an application for Innovate 海角视频’s Business-Led Innovation in Response to Global Disruption competition.
Cropdesk was awarded a £50,000 prize, which it could add to £160,000 raised in previous Innovate 海角视频 funding bids. Innovate 海角视频 EDGE was also able to secure the business £25,000 in impact funding.
Mr Trehane, who is also the director of the Dorset Blueberry Company, which grows fruit at a farm in Wimborne, said his own experiences as a farmer helped shape his new business.
The entrepreneur's grandfather established the 海角视频’s first commercial blueberry plantation, with the company now supplying blueberries for organic food box schemes Riverford Organics and Abel & Cole.
“When I took over the farm, harvest workers would write their name on a piece of cornflake packet and stick it to the box they picked," said Mr Trehane. “That’s the level of data we were gathering. Our sole metric for whether we had a good season was our bank balance.
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“Supermarkets want to know what supply they can expect on a daily, weekly, seasonal basis. Before I developed my own technology, I was just guessing here.”
Mr Trehane said he hoped that the Seasonal Jobs app could be a “game changer” for harvesting in British fields this summer.
On the platform applicants fill in a basic CV, and include details of their availability. Employers set their own requirements and the system pairs up likely matches.
Last year the government launched a recruitment drive called ‘Pick for Britain'.
The campaign tried to encourage more people in the 海角视频, including those furloughed from their regular jobs, to help with the harvesting of fruit and vegetable crops during the pandemic, work which has been reliant on overseas labour.
Mr Trehane said: “The government responded with the ‘Pick for Britain’ campaign, which was brilliant at raising the profile of farmer’s labour shortages.
“But it also overloaded the industry with thousands of applications from people offering three hours here and there.
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“Fruit picking is a 5am start, six days a week, pick your arms off sort of job – so those applications weren’t particularly useful.”
Mr Trehane also has global ambitions for both platforms, as both are designed to be scalable, operable and useful to farms of any size in any country and in any language.
As part of Innovate 海角视频 EDGE’s Global Business Innovation Programme, Mr Trehane was able to participate in an international agri-tech conference in Melbourne, Australia.
Mr Trehane said his aspirations would have been “simply impossible” without the help of the innovation agency.
He added: “The sounding board support has been fantastic. Particularly in the beginning when I was a solopreneur, the ability to download what's in my head and have someone experienced say; ‘great, but think about it this way’, was absolutely invaluable.”