- Partnership between Ruralco and rural tech company, DAS, delivers first tech dedicated to rural property
- Offers constantly updating data on increasingly important predictors of agricultural land value, including climate, drought stress, sustainability and soil type
- Designed to give competitive advantage to investors in agricultural assets
23 September 2019
Rural services provider Ruralco is rolling out emerging technology to its Ruralco Property team, after a 2018 cornerstone investment in Digital Agriculture Services (DAS), a Melbourne based rural technology company, and a 6-month trial and development phase by the Ruralco Property team.
The Rural Property Hub™ is the first industry-specific solution released by DAS via its Rural Intelligence Platform™ and has been created with rural real estate professionals and agricultural service providers in mind.
It is being used by Ruralco Property to offer powerful insights on agricultural properties quickly and easily, along with access to “one touch” automated rural property reports for clients, providing data on titles, infrastructure, ground water, production metrics and climate.
Ruralco and CSIRO-backed DAS joined forces in 2018, but have kept their partnership largely under wraps, as they piloted an initial rollout of the DAS Rural Intelligence Platform™ across the Ruralco Property network.
Last year, DAS launched its first Rural Intelligence Platform™, which can search for traditional metrics like sales but can also look at advanced metrics such as year-over-year analysis of productivity, climate, rainfall, land use and more.
Ruralco property agent, Matt Childs of Pat Rice Hawkins said: “DAS is supplying highly relevant agricultural data and our agents are using the property reports for initial research to keep us ahead of the pack.”
“The Introduction of the Ruralco Property Report through the DAS platform into our rural real estate agency has provided our sales staff with an enormous advantage within the industry,” he said.
According to Mr Childs, “The comprehensive Ruralco Property Reports that DAS can prepare are arming our staff with the highest standard of property information which benefits our clients in many ways,” he said.
“The data supports our analysis of a property’s value and capability and therefore can assist a buyer or seller in making the most appropriate decision within the real estate space.”
Mr Andrew Slatter, EGM – Rural Services Northern for Ruralco said “DAS brings unique technology and insights into the hands of investors giving them new sources of evidence-backed data to showcase the true potential of any rural property.” Mr Slatter noted “this tool in the hands of our agents, and their deep regional ‘boots on the ground’ approach is the ultimate combination of technology and common sense.”
DAS CEO, Mr Anthony Willmott said the biggest technology innovations to hit real estate had all been focused on big city residential or commercial real estate, “In all real estate transactions data is critical but for rural real estate it’s even more critical. Buyers and sellers need to know what a property will yield, what’s the productivity, weather, soil, crop type and more.”
“Property buyers now expect a deeper level of insight and data and agents want to give it to them, but they have been hindered by a lack of reliable data. We saw an opportunity to empower rural real estate agents to have fact-based conversations with potential buyers and sellers about any rural property to drive confidence and competitive advantage,” he added.
It is expected that the technology will be extended to other Ruralco services and products over time.
“It’s great to be working with Ruralco who share this vision”, added Mr. Willmott.
For more information:
Catharine Heffernan
Ruralco Communications Manager
Phone: 0457 584 619
Email: cheffernan@ruralco.com.au
Sarah Gorman
Advisor at Digital Agriculture Services
Phone: 0439 577 637
Email: sarahg@dasintel.io
About Ruralco
Ruralco is one of Australia’s leading agriservices businesses, with over 500 locations nationally and employing over 2,000 staff under a variety of brands. Ruralco services Australian farmers through the provision of an extensive range of ag supplies through both its owned stores and CRT, Australia’s largest independent rural retailing group, and provides agronomic advice and agency services that help maximise the returns of production. Ruralco is also a leading distributor of water products, provider of on-farm water infrastructure services, and is a broker of water entitlements to the Australian agricultural sector.
About Digital Agriculture Services
Digital Agriculture Services is a rural technology company that has built the first, complete Rural Intelligence Platform™ for Australian agri-analytics. We deliver an incomparable experience to companies across the agribusiness ecosystem in service of the Digital Agriculture Services mission: to deliver the most reliable rural intelligence available. Founded in 2017 in partnership with CSIRO, Digital Agriculture Services is based in Melbourne, Australia. Learn more at digitalagricultureservices.com