At any given time in Australia about 10,000 people were driving around checking water, and if they were not checking it they were worrying about it said Farmbot managing director Andrew Coppin.
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"They spend a lot of time checking it because it doesn't matter whether you're growing sheep, cows, strawberries or almonds; if you don't have water you've got a problem," he said.
"With livestock, especially in a country like ours with a huge weather volatility and a lot of droughts, it's not uncommon for properties to have someone who is permanently checking water."
He said Farmbot was developed about five years ago as an on-farm monitoring device, was constantly updated with the latest technology and being utilised by the Wilmot Cattle Company with its properties near Ebor and on the eastern fall, between Uralla and Walcha.
"It puts technology in a farmer's desktop or on their phone. They know exactly how much water they've got in near real time," Mr Coppin said.
"By providing reporting to that degree about your water resources, you are going to know very quickly if there are any tank splits, pipes leaking or systems not working how they should be. It's not going to be three days later when there is 100,000 litres of water spilled in the paddock.
"Similarly, we know that three-year-old beef steers consume about 42 litres a day each. So, we can calculate how much water you've got, and your carrying capacity can be calculated by what you've got, rather than what you think you have."
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He said farmers were tired of hearing about data. They were more interested in how it could benefit them.
Wilmot has merged Farmbot's near real time water tank and rainfall data onto Maia's Technology's Paddock and Herd management platform, to save valuable time and make better management decisions for his operations.
The company is trialling these technologies and prospectively others, to create a single platform to manage their on-farm information and data to allow for better daily resource management as well as year on year comparisons of herds, water, rainfall and pastures.
"The reality of business in a competitive marketplace is that you need to constantly optimise your resources," Mr Coppin said.
"This is literally saying [for example:] that paddock can run 88 head of cattle for 43 days, four hours and 15 minutes, based on the water, grass and soil inputs. Or, in 43 days, you are going to be out of water. It's no longer a guess. It's calculated."
