Robotic pasture tool Spikey® has come a long way from research prototype to commercial reality, but fulfilling its potential to slash greenhouse gas emissions is the goal.

The potential pay-off for robotic pasture tool Spikey® is huge: up to 70% reductions in nitrous oxide, the potent and long-lasting greenhouse gas, plus large reductions in nitrate leaching to waterways.

Spikey® is towed over a paddock to detect and treat cow urine patches with additives that stimulate grass growth to utilise the excess nitrogen. This can potentially slow the rate of nitrogen transformation from insoluble to soluble, so that more can be used over time.

But taking a product to market isn’t easy. Taking a large, electronics-loaded farm machine whose effectiveness depends on complex ecosystem dynamics and controversial chemicals to market? Some might say that’s near impossible.

Fortunately, Geoff Bates, inventor of Spikey® and co-founder of Pastoral Robotics, isn’t the sort to shy away from a challenge – and a lot of people want to see his invention’s game-changing potential come to fruition.

Early backing opens doors to bigger research investment

AGMARDT was one early supporter, providing an initial $20,000 grant in 2017 to prove the effectiveness of the Spikey® tool. The results varied but were promising, with some soils showing a 30–35% increase in nitrogen uptake and pasture dry matter.

“It’s so hard to get a business like this going, and extraordinarily hard to get funding,” says Bates. “The AGMARDT grant made a huge impression. Proving the machine worked was critical in getting investors like the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre” (now called the Ag Emissions Centre).

In 2020, that early proof led to a four-year, $1.7 million research programme with AgResearch, Massey University, and Dairy Trust Taranaki funded via MPI’s Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change (SLAMACC) fund.

Proving the environmental benefits

The SLAMACC-funded farm-scale trial found statistically significant increase in pasture of up to 15% and up to20% reductions of nitrate leaching in paddocks treated with Spikey®.

If a nitrification inhibitor is added, reductions in nitrous oxide emissions can reach 70%. That’s impossible for now, with nitrogen inhibitors off the market after residues of one, DCD, were detected in milk. Bates believes the Spikey® system can solve that problem by reducing the amount of product needed by 90%, and enabling a full grazing cycle withholding period, but acknowledges the current lack of industry support for rethinking our approach.

Results vary, but profitability benefits

There are more research questions yet to answer. The SLAMACC project found the treatment increased pasture growth on the Rotorua research farm without a reduction in nitrate leaching, but on the Taranaki farm reduced nitrate leaching by up to 20% with no effect on pasture growth. The results are positive either way, says Bates. “If you’re farming in Rotorua, because you’re getting more grass you could use less fertiliser, or you could farm 10% less of your farm, which mean less leaching. Or you can bring in less PKE.”

An international research collaboration will provide some answers. Led by Surinder Saggar and Jiafa Luo at the Bioeconomy Science Institute, the partnership includes Ireland’s Teagasc and University College of Dublin, and Pastoral Robotics Ltd.

“It’s a huge challenge,” says Bates. “Agricultural science takes a year to even indicate whether you might be on the right path, and you need to replicate that over another year. In science you get so little for so much, over such a long period of time, compared to developing a machine.”

Commercial realities and future focus

In 2022, AGMARDT provided a second grant of $150,000 to test the integration of Spikey® into a Canterbury farming system. The project contributed to the development of a contractor-based business model for commercialising the Spikey® technology. Pastoral Robotics has now manufactured four Spikey® machines and sells Spikey® services under this business model.

The machines in Rotorua and Ashburton machine are busy, says Bates. “We’ve been operating in Rotorua for ages, and it’s been very effective there for a long time in terms of pasture growth.”

Currently, Spikey® is a big machine, built for towing behind a tractor on flat farms. A smaller Spikey® has been built for research purposes, and that’s the future direction, says Bates. An early contractor drove Spikey® as if it was a mass-produced John Deere machine built on millions of dollars of R&D investment, rather than the first production of a machine built for a few hundred thousand, says Bates ruefully. “It’s hard to build a new product that meets people’s expectations, and their maintenance abilities.”

A smaller size will make it easier to transport between farms, and will be less expensive to produce, ultimately bringing service costs down, making the business more recession-proof.

“The technology will have to be used on every farm at some point if we want to reduce nitrous oxide and nitrate leaching from dairy farming,” says Bates. “In five years or maybe 15 years it’ll be a no-brainer financially. And I think eventually we’ll get over the problems of getting a nitrification inhibitor approved.”

When asked what advice he would you give to other agritech innovators seeking early-stage funding, Bates pauses. “I’d try and talk them out of it,” he says, “and if I can’t talk them out of it, then maybe they’ve got enough drive to get there.”

Grants:  A17034 Reducing cow urine nitrate leaching with Spikey‐applied ORUN; A20021 Canterbury Spikey

Dates: 2017 – 2022